Hyper Lethal Remnant
by The Chosen Writers
Summary: Reach is lost. With one final push to survive the dead planet, Noble Six uncovers a forerunner structure buried underneath the glassed surface. But it won't be easy. From one dead planet to one where humanity fights to survive. Noble Six can make a choice: Continue to fight for humanity, or… watch from the sidelines. AU. Rewrite of Remnant of Noble. Rated T.
1. Prologue

_**Prologue**_

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own RWBY or Halo Reach. All rights go to Rooster Teeth and 343i/Bungie

* * *

"This is the _Pillar of Autumn_ , we're away," The voice of Captain Keyes echoed over the comm. suit of the Mjolnir armour, "The package is with us."

Noble six watched as the final ship left on the planet Reach escaped through the clouds, the supporting thrusters on its hull falling to the ground. Humanity's final defensive bastion against the Covenant had taken 38 days, 14 hours and 27 minutes to fall to their relentless genocidal campaign.

The spartan withdrew the DMR sitting on her back and settled the rifle in her hands. The warrior letting out a soft sigh, as her shoulders slumping forwards. Glancing back over her shoulder, the barrel of the MAC at the shipbreaking yards entered her vision.

Below her positioning on the small platform Covenant forces roared, squeaked and chattered, challenging the Spartan. She responded with a singular, blindly fired round to a plasma grenade belted on an Unggoy. The resulting explosion set off the other grenades on four other Covenant, wiping out more than half of the squad approaching her with dumb luck alone. With the elites stumbling and struggling to retain their bearings, Noble Six took stock of her situation: Two magazines for her DMR in total, the reserve magazine at half capacity at best. Her magnum was also low, with its final clip already inside the weapon. She had no explosives. And she had her knives. She always had her knives.

All in all, it wasn't anything the Spartan hadn't faced down before.

With her DMR braced against her shoulder, she squared its sights on an Elite General. Depressing the trigger in quick succession, the spartan unloaded six rounds into the elite, destroying its shields. The Spartan rolled to the side, dodging a return shot from its fuel rod and silenced it with another round through its shieldless head. She redirected her fire, downing the remaining two grunts with a headshot. The last member of Noble on Reach hopped off the platform, her DMR barking with each squeeze of its trigger.

As Six landed in a crouch as the shields of the Sangheili minor popped before it fell with a ragged hole through the neck. The spartan scowled as she loaded in the last magazine. Half had been optimistic. Three rounds were in the magazine, all of which bounced off the final enemy's - an Elite Field Marshal - shields. Six's eyes narrowed as she swapped to her pistol and rose to her feet. She began closing the distance, firing her magnum with each step, unnerved by the now charging Field Marshall. The beast swiped at the Spartan with its energy sword, to which she dodged with a swift combat roll to the side. The weapon passed inches above her right shoulder and her shields flared in response to the heat of the blade.

She turned, only for the Sangheili Field Marshal to produce the handle for a second energy sword, it's own blade still active at its side. In its clawed hand, it spun the energy sword as its eyes floated over Noble Six's ashen purple armour. When its eyes finally returned to the Spartan's visor, he tossed the energy weapon towards her. Surprised, the spartan fumbled momentarily with the given weapon. The empty magnum dropped to the ground.

Looking back to the Field Marshal, whose own energy sword was reactivated and had settled into its stance. Tightening her grip, the hiss of the energy sword's twin blades filled her helmet's audio receptors. Six slid her right foot back a step along the charred ground, the twin bluish purple blades entering her field of vision.

The two warriors charged each other, energy swords colliding as the deadly duel began. Glancing blows were traded, each set of armour receiving shallow slashes or burn marks once shielding failed. The elite got lucky, however, and delivered a slash to the Spartan's helmet. Dodging a second lethal swing, Six moved several steps back, giving her helmet a smack. The elite, surprisingly and confusingly, was waiting on her. With a hiss, the helmet was discarded, allowing the airborne ash to fall into the Spartan's stained hair. Turning back to the elite, the spartan reactivated the energy sword in her grasp.

They clashed again, the blades intertwined as each tried to edge out an advantage. The superior height of the Sangheili was matched by Six's brute strength and force of will. The two were separated by inches. The Elite's mandibles twitched and its eyes widened in recognition. After a few tense seconds, the two retreated several feet from each other.

"Impressive… demon." The elite garbled out. Six narrowed her eyes as the elite deactivated its energy sword. "You…have a familiar style…" He mused, as if to himself.

"Leave, before I change my mind." The Spartan hissed through grinding teeth.

It turned away. Six deactivated the weapon in her hand and tossed it back to the Field Marshal. She grabbed her helmet and put the damaged piece of equipment back on her head. Why did it spare her? And why did she give the weapon back? Six turned her attention to where the MAC gun was located. She didn't quite grasp why she, a Lone Wolf, a _Hyper-Lethal_ rated Lone Wolf, let the Field Marshal walk away alive, nor why it let her go in return. And without any extra thought, she wouldn't.

When she looked back, the Field Marshal was gone. Rolling her neck, the Lone Wolf picked up her discarded magnum and made her way up the hill towards the facility. Blood covered the ground, and the stench of burning flesh lingered in the ashen air as she entered the facility and proceeded to the lowest level.

After navigating the twisting and descending hallways, Six replenished her ammunition in an armoury, as well as her lost magnum and stocked up with MREs. With her supplies sorted, the Spartan continued on deeper. Kicking open the heavy metal door with the 'Restricted Access' crap on the door face, the Lone Wolf's gaze fell upon the generator and chemicals for the MAC several hundred feet above her. She hefted a trio of demolition charges the local marines had been kind enough to leave for her.

* * *

Noble Six looked back in the direction of Aszod. The Covenant were glassing it now. Raising her Tactical Computer to her visor, she pressed a virtual red button. Not a second later, the ground rumbled.

The charges had done their job. The chemicals, coolant and the fusion generator produced a mushroom cloud that would have the Covenant drawn for hundreds of kilometres to the scene. The toxic chemicals within the cloud and sequential five-kilometre radius wouldn't stay long, but it would be around long enough to cause the Covenant issues, as well as lives.

With a small smirk, the Spartan turned and continued on her way, pointed towards the ruins of Sword base. Covenant ships of all sizes screamed overhead, ignoring the lone Spartan as they went towards the toxic kill zone that had been created by Six at Aszod. Her motion detector picked up something moving ahead, too slow to be any flight-capable vehicle kicked the Spartan into a combat mindset again. Her DMR snapped up as she proceeded slowly forward.

The explosions that continued in Aszod rippled like earthquake tremors, weakening the ground that covered the secret beneath the Spartan's feet. The ground crumbled and sent the half-ton soldier colliding with a metal floor with an equal amount of dirt and stone. Shaking her head, Noble Six climbed back to her feet and began wiping the dirt and smaller stones from parts of her armour. After a moment more she collected her rifle and continued on, helmet camera recording all visuals Six came across. The smooth but aged metal that made up the walls were turning a rustic brown, converging on a doorway a couple hundred yards ahead of her. Six compared it to the interior of the ONI facilities she'd had the misfortune of ever setting foot into during her military career, just not as white, clean, or as ominous.

The Spartan swept her rifle from side to side as she passed through the doorway into a circular room. Just like the hallway she arrived from, the walls were a rustic brown and reached up into a domed ceiling. Inactive and crumbling consoles lay about the room in a disorganized fashion, with no familiar layout present. Her rifle still elevated, she took several tentative steps into the room, before something clicked beneath her foot.

"Aw hell…"

Ahead of her, a panel lit up, and more rusted metal rose, a vague blue hue overtaking the floating metal. She kept sweeping her DMR from side to side, confirming that no hostiles were present. The External Uplink on her helmet flashed red as it began collecting readings around the spartan, replacing the single-direction helmet camera. Like a switch had been flipped, the walls lit up with lines of blue and the floating object glowed brighter. Six squinted her eyes behind her polarised visor, turning her head away while raising a hand in front of it.

"Oh! A Reclaimer, at last!" A high pitched voice sounded throughout the room as the light died down, snapping the spartan from her momentary distraction. A polished silver sphere appeared, glowing a vibrant blue from its sides and from its 'eye' in the middle met the muzzle of Six's marksman rifle, separated by mere inches.

"Welcome reclaimer! I am 037 Vengeance Solitude, Monitor of this facility." The Spartan gave the sphere a quizzical look from behind her helmet.

"Are you a Smart AI?" Six asked, her weapon twitching from the force of her grip. 037 bounced around in place for a moment.

"If that is what you wish to call us, Reclaimer, yes. But first, we must seal this facility. Protocol 56 is clear: Only Reclaimers may be allowed access this facility." 037's solitary blue eye flashed brighter for a moment, and the door behind the Spartan closed with a loud thump.

"You may remove your foot from the sensor plate, Reclaimer. It poses no threat." Solitude stated, moving from side to side in front of the Spartan, the rifle following its every move.

"What's the plate for?" Keeping her foot firmly planted, Noble Six asked with a glance around the room from behind her black visor, her head moving from side to side slightly.

"It recognizes Reclaimers as they existed during the time of the forerunners. Over 100,000 years ago. This facility contains 1,024,000,000 gigabytes of information acquired over 100,000 years ago along with 351,296,000 gigabytes accumulated from other, defunct facilities. Included are the necessary teleportation facilities to move between marked zones." Solitude replied, moving around the raised DMR to the Spartan's face.

"So, the plate isn't an explosive big enough to destroy the facility - rather a DNA scanner?" Six asked, slowly stepping back from the monitor, and the plate. She kept the rifle raised. "And you have a little over 1.3 billion gigabytes of data, as well as instant transport?"

With the floating lightbulb in front of her, she decided on dropping _how_ it could scan through her armour.

"Correct, Reclaimer. Although in your current state, you would not survive the transportation of the portal, and 875,296,000 gigabytes stored in this facility is regarded as junk data. And as of two minutes, seventeen seconds and four-hundred and fifty-one milliseconds ago, Protocol three-six-eleven-nine is in effect." Solitude answered, floating towards an exit of the spacious room.

The Spartan narrowed her eyes and shook her head, following the AI down one of the hallways of the facility. She knew she had a few major injuries at best. 037 entered a hallway, filled with doors to rooms filled with machines and what Six could only assume was medical equipment.

"What is Protocol 36119?" Six asked.

"Protocol 36119 activates in response to a Reclaimer accessing this facility. It dictates I must do everything within my power to assist and protect. This protocol acts in conjunction with Protocol five-six." Solitude answered.

"Five-six sounds moot with 36119," Six mentioned offhandedly. Solitude didn't seem to hear as he continued talking.

"Over the last one-hundred-thousand years, my capacity to assist has unfortunately dwindled. Materials required to support a Reclaimer such as yourself have had to be used in the maintenance of this facility. There are the barest of materials to upgrade your arsenal." 037 turned around towards Six but kept moving further down the hall.

Finally, the unusual pair reached a room, much bigger than the ones Six had gotten a glimpse of on their way, and with far more equipment.

"Your combat skin - a stage 1.5 combat skin by Forerunner records - will be dismantled, repaired and upgraded to a stage 3 if possible. Minimum stage 3 combat skin is required to survive zone teleportation. Reusing materials in existing armour and weapon components will help in conserving the already small supply of materials that still exist within this facility. Chances of achieving stage 3 combat skin are 49%." Solitude said.

"Step onto the platform, your combat skin will need to be upgraded and repaired. You, yourself, also need medical assistance." 037 hovered in front of the machine. Six hesitated. She could surrender her visible weapons no problem, but her armour was an entirely different matter. She hadn't removed the armour since her transfer to Noble.

"Do nothing but repair it." The Spartan warned, stepping onto the platform.

"As you wish, Reclaimer." The AI acknowledged, hovering out of the way.

Once Solitude was out of range, the Spartan was almost immediately surrounded by machines. Quicker than the UNSC every could hope to peel off Mjolnir armour off a super soldier, the Spartan was already without it in under thirty seconds. Not even ten seconds out of her armour and she shivered, despising how naked she felt without the protective equipment. Six was left in the armoured black undersuit which was in dire need of repair. Plasma burns were spaced out, with most gathering at the joints.

"I would change into this, Reclaimer." Solitude floating in front of her face, a second black bodysuit floating along with it.

Taking the bodysuit, the Spartan stepped behind a solid wall of opaque blue hardlight to change, while Vengeance Solitude floated over to a terminal, inputting a set of commands, instructing the Facility to upgrade the Spartan's armour. Six returned a moment later, allowing Solitude to take the damaged bodysuit and place it on an empty table as the Spartan's Mjolnir armour disappeared into the floor, the hole closed by reassembling blue pixels.

"And, if you so wish, Reclaimer, we can update your physical and chemical enhancements. However, due to an inadequate amount of time for preparation, the chemical and the physical enhancements being meant for my creator's genetic structure, there is a 12% chance that you will not survive the procedure and a 32% chance you will remain visually unaltered. The physical enhancements will also draw materials from upgrading your combat skin. Chances of stage 3 are reduced by a further 27%." 037 fidgeted in the air. Six thought for a moment, unmoving. She could make do with the armour as it was.

"Acceptable." The Spartan finally replied and stepped over to a medical berth. Clamps snapped over the Spartan's limbs as she lay down. Memories danced across her vision for a second before an injected sedative put the Spartan under.

* * *

 **~TimeSkip 2 Weeks~**

* * *

The Spartan awoke, squinting at the artificial light that assaulted her temporarily sensitive eyes. After several seconds of rapid blinking, Six sat up on the medical berth, clad in her old armoured bodysuit once more, flexed her numb hands. The multitude of separate layers creaked as she made a tight fist. The Hyper-Lethal's mind ran at a mile a minute, digesting the newest information present within her mind. With an ever-dissipating sway, the Spartan stood and observed her surroundings.

She found her armour within seconds of beginning her search. The once scarred purple and white paint job was now as pristine as it had once been when it was first assembled. The void black of the visor was repaired as well, soaking in any and all light that struck its surface. The TacPad on the left wrist was less noticeable now, about a third as thick as it was previously, the blue glow it emitted barely noticeable compared to the artificial light occupying the room.

Six approached a mirror, noting the slightly darker tone her skin had received during her time unconscious. Her hair was the same; purple blood stains covered a good portion but didn't drown the dark blonde. The Spartan's electric blue eyes had taken a ring of gold around her irises. Satisfied, the Spartan turned to her weapons, occupying a small table next to her armour.

The DMR appeared relatively unaltered but weighed about a quarter less than it weapon had previously. The x4 sight on the marksman rifle had been squared and the ammunition counter below it had been removed, as well as the foresight. The slate gray construction seemed out of place amongst all the brighter metal. Hitting the ejection switch, Six pulled the magazine from the rifle and did a manual count. Fifteen rounds. With a quick motion, she returned the full mag to the stock of the rifle and moved to her Magnum.

As with the marksman rifle on the table, the Magnum was lighter but was noticeably larger than it was previously and possessed a more rounded frame. And, as she had done with the DMR, Noble Six ejected the magazine and counted the rounds stored within it. With a satisfied nod, the Spartan returned the extended 12-round magazine back into the handle of the weapon and set it down. The combat knife that sat on the opposite side of the table with the rest of her knives, all of which were lighter by some degree. Emile's Kukri, his trademark knife, was polished and glinting in the light, but was missing the dried blood that had occupied it's massive blade before. The Spartan smiled lightly, testing the weight of the blade. Same as before. At least something stayed the same

"I see you are awake, Reclaimer." Solitude appeared in a haze of yellow rings no more than a foot in front Six.

The chest plate was maneuvered into position and clicked into place on the Spartan's torso. Locks clicked with the armour's power unit and remaining torso piece. The armour was different, lighter. While not overly lighter, it was still a noticeable change to what it weighed before. Other clamps and locks whirred and clicked as the other parts of the armour were assembled around the Spartan.

"Your unique physiology provided quite the enigma with your augmentations, Reclaimer. Your original enhancements were not formed properly to allow for full combat potential. You should notice an increase of reaction time and combat effectiveness. I also took the liberty of upgrading your equipment, Reclaimer. Your combat skin is now a Stage 2, despite my own efforts to get it to Stage 3. Powerplant, shielding, and plating have been improved and updated to blueprints found in your armour's data records. A full list of modifications and repairs are on your wrist-mount device." 037 Vengeance Solitude commented as Six stepped off the armouring platform, rolling and rotating her limbs.

"My thanks, Solitude." ' _Even though I told you not to upgrade it._ '

The Spartan took her helmet from the grip of a clawed machine with a slight scowl and placed the device on her head, the pressure seal closing with an audible hiss.

As the Spartan raised her left arm, she tapped the backside of both her shoulder pauldrons. The quantum mirrors responded instantly, registering on her motion sensor. Then, with a few quick motions across the screen of her Tactical Pad, the Spartan brought up all of her enhancements. Simulations suggested an increase from fifteen to twenty percent increase for combat effectiveness. Shield strength increase by thirty-five percent, as well as an increase in her already superb reaction time by six-thousandths of a second. Theoretically, depending on how this affected 'Spartan Time', Six could potentially become untouchable by even some of the best of her brethren - the Spartan-IIs included. She scrolled further through the information, reaching the weapons section in a few swipes of her finger.

The Spartan's TacPad was now linked to a 'pocket dimension'. This pocket dimension carried all the ammunition the Spartan would need for years, and then some. In simplistic terms, this 'pocket dimension' was, essentially, a giant warehouse, filled the corresponding weapon munitions and grenades - Human and Covenant. Assault Rifles, LMGs, Heavy weaponry - you name it. The Spartan carried it. It took only a few seconds of digesting all the information to decipher how it worked and equip a trio of grenades. As the monitor returned, Noble Six finished equipping her weapons into their corresponding positions. She checked the side compartments on her thighs, nodding in satisfaction that the silver objects were still there.

However, a question still remained. She raised her arm again and double checked the lists within. "How did you acquire all the weaponry? I only arrived with a DMR, and a magnum."

037 fidgeted in the air. "I sent sentinels to the surface to acquire materials. They acquired some of your space-grade materials, electronics and more of your weaponry and some of your enemy. Unfortunately, forerunner materials have not been found. Unless a facility exists wherever you end up going, Reclaimer, forerunner weaponry will be unavailable."

"My thanks again, then." Six bowed her helmeted head a bit, lowering her arm back to her side. Vengeance bobbed in place a few times and zipped away, leaving the Spartan alone for a few minutes more before returning.

Carried within a small blue sphere guided by Vengeance was a data card. Six had an idea of what was on it, but wouldn't know for certain until the monitor confirmed it. The blue sphere descended to the Spartan's eye level before it popped, landing in the outstretched palm. Six studied the smooth metal blue and orange data streams moving along the three-inch length of the Data card.

"What is this?" The Spartan asked, turning the card over in her hand. They began the trek from the medical section to the main room.

"Data card, Reclaimer. It contains the remaining Five-hundred million gigabytes of relevant non-junk data stored in this facility. All of it is the original information itself. The other data has been purged from this facility's servers. The facility has enough power to provide one final function." Vengeance Solitude spoke, the blue light it emitted dimming slightly with the information the monitor imparted to the Spartan.

"What exactly is stored? Blueprints, technology, weaponry…?"

"Blueprints and history are all there is, Reclaimer. A backup is installed in our wrist-mounted device." Solitude replied almost instantly. "Included are my creator's entire history, and all recorded history of Humanity at their peak during the time of the Forerunners."

"So there is five-hundred million terabytes of Blueprints and History?" The Spartan confirmed. Vengeance bobbed in confirmation. The Spartan was silent for all of three seconds before replying. "Take it to Earth. If what you say is true, and I indeed possess a copy on my Tactical Pad, then I won't need it."

Besides, going back meant returning to The Office. The Hyper-Lethal Spartan had no intention of being ONI's Grim Reaper again. Not if she had a say in it.

"Where do you wish for it to go, Reclaimer?"

"Earth." The Spartan hid her annoyance at having to repeat herself.

"Of course, Reclaimer. Is there anyone, in particular, you wish for the chip to be sent to?" 037 inquired to the last of Noble.

"Admiral Terrence Hood, UNSC." Six responded almost instantaneously, her voice echoing her resolve. She'd met Lord Hood once, during an assassination mission for ONI. That meeting was… interesting. At least it helped get her to _Noble_.

"It will be done, Reclaimer." Summoning a Sentinel, Noble six surrendered the chip for transport.

As the Sentinel floated off, Noble Six double checked her gear. Her weapons were loaded, her blades as sharp as possible, and her dog tags around her neck. Nodding to Solitude, the duo ventured back to the Main room, where the console still lay, and the Sentinel disappearing with the chip. Twenty-six seconds is all it took for the Sentinel to deliver the chip to the requested person. As soon as it returned, it disappeared back down one of the two hallways.

Unexpectedly, 037 shot a blue and orange beam at the Spartan's Tac Pad, leaving a gift for the Reclaimer under its care. Jolting her arm back, Noble Six glanced at her TacPad before looking to Solitude with her armoured head tilted to one side in confusion.

"I have transferred two pieces of forerunner equipment to you. One of these is a Hard Light shield. The other is a vision setting. Also, it now possesses a limited ability to create. Anything larger than your small four-wheeled vehicles, a mongoose, according to your data, cannot be built." Six nodded in understanding before activated the Hard Light shield. It held for thirty seconds before turning red and disappearing.

Glancing at the icon just above the corner of her Motion tracker, the hard light shield icon slowly filled back up, returning to quarter charge after ten seconds. Removing her helmet, Six pulled her dog tags to her face, reading them over. The blackened and scorched B-312 shone under the artificial light. Turning to the other tag, she glimpsed the name she hadn't heard or used in years.

 _Artemis_.

The Spartan sighed silently and turned them over, reading the engravings on the back of either tag. Her mother's name occupied one, while her siblings and father occupied another.

The Spartan returned her dog tags to her neck and placed her helmet back on her head. Glancing around the big room once again, she squared her shoulders and began walking around the area, deep in thought. 037 was silent as he prepared the glowing transport device in the middle.

"It is ready, Reclaimer. However, the success rate for a stage two combat skin is less than 70%." 037 interrupted, bringing Artemis out of her thoughts. Slipping her helmet back on, she looked towards the portal. As it swirled, the portal's blue barrier rotated opposite of its black interior.

"I'll take my chances, Solitude." The Spartan replied evenly.

The forerunner portal hummed, doubling its size to accommodate the Spartan, with no specific destination set. The Spartan's plan was clear: Disappear from the view of ONI and the UNSC. Let them believe she perished on Reach, living on in legend and story. Stepping up to the portal, Six drew her DMR, turning towards 037 Vengeance Solitude for a final time. She saluted the monitor in a gesture of thanks.

Solitude shifted slightly, unexpecting the salute from one under his care for the past couple weeks. The AI shifted again, producing a Hologram of the salute being returned from a UNSC Marine. An imitation of Gunnery Sergeant Stacker. Likely acquired from her armour's data drives. Smiling lightly under her helmet, Noble Six dropped her salute.

Returning her attention to the portal, Vengeance remarked for the final time to the Spartan. "Safe travels, Reclaimer. To wherever you may end up."

Six nodded her head, stepping through the portal and into the unknown beyond.

* * *

In an alleyway of an unknown planet, a dim flash of light resided in an alley before disappearing. The Spartan stood, taking in her surroundings.

' _Not on a UNSC planet_ ' Artemis mused, ' _That much I know. Nothing on Comms, either. Good._ '

This is _exactly_ what the Spartan wanted. Pulling up her tacpad, Noble Six rifled through the few armour abilities she had received, spotting the hard light shield and Camouflage, along with Promethean vision. Activating her active camo, she switched to her weaponry, finding the form of the UNSC standard issue sniper rifle SRS-99. Swapping her DMR for the rifle, Six crept out of the alley, keeping along the wall of the old buildings.

After a little while, Six caught sight of a group of five, four men in black, sporting what looked like oversized machetes, all wearing red tinted glasses. The first man, who Six identified as the leader, was wearing a white suit and a black bowler hat with a red stripe, along with a cane. Locking the sniper to her back, Six trailed the group to a small shop, From Dust till Dawn, her augmented eyes following the group like a predator stalking its prey. After waiting for a few minutes, Artemis' motion tracker lit up, the answer to the movement being revealed by a pair of people flying through the window. Disabling her active camo, Six stuck to the shadows, watching as a small girl in red pulled out a giant scythe.

' _What the hell? Kids with scythes? Just where the hell am I?'_ Artemis questioned herself, puzzled by what transpired not five seconds before.

She shook it off and raised the long weapon in her hands. Six's finger curled around the trigger but stopped short of compressing it. It would be foolish to fire, and she would definitely wake up the entire area and beyond. The SRS wasn't a quiet weapon by any stretch. Sighing, the Spartan watched as the red and back dressed girl took on the 4 goons. The man in white snapped her out of her thoughts.

"You were worth every cent, truly you were." The man sarcastically remarked, returning his attention to the girl with the scythe.

"Well, Red, I think we can all say it's been an eventful evening, and as much as I'd love to stick around…" The man pointed his cane at the girl, the bottom flipping up to crosshairs. Six tensed, ready to jump in and pull the girl out of the way if absolutely necessary.

"I'm afraid, this, is where we part ways."

He fired, and the girl twirled her scythe and fired it into the ground, propelling her away from the blast and into the air. Artemis pulled up her Hard Light barrier to protect her from the blast, revealing her position to any paying attention. The cane-wielding criminal ran to a ladder as little red was preoccupied dodging the shot.

As the young girl was about to land, Six deactivated her hard light barrier, sprinting from cover, past little red and activating her jetpack after a moment of contemplation. Catching the girl, Six set Red down and continued onto the roof. Little red joined her nearly right away with a bang.

"Hey!" Red snarked.

"Persistent..." He muttered. A vehicle looking similar to a falcon that Artemis had used on Reach ascended, shining its spotlight on little red and Six. Her visor polarised, dimming the effects of the light. The Spartan scowled, positioning herself in front of the girl.

"End of the line, my annoyances." He threw a red crystal from his hand towards the ground in front of the duo, immediately taking aim at the falling crystal.

The Lone Wolf was magnitudes faster, however, her finger already depressing the trigger of her rifle. The 14.5x114mm High-Velocity Armor-Piercing round grazed the tumbling, volatile crystal. Even grazed, the potential-to-kinetic energy imparted onto the crystal by the large round fractured it, detonating it prematurely. The heat seared the Spartan's armour, leaving fresh scorch marks.

"Whoa-ho-ho," The sadistic criminal cried out in glee, believing he had eliminated the two people who had interrupted his job. "Huh?" He observed, confused.

When the Spartan looked up, she encountered a purple glyph. There was also a new player on the field, not five feet in front of the crouched super soldier. She had blond hair in a bun, a black and purple cape and a riding crop in one hand. Dispersing the shield, the woman brought the crop back, glowing a brief purple before unleashing an attack on the odd-looking vehicle. Artemis' shield warning finally quit, her shields regenerating with a golden glow. Scowling, Six waited for an opening to attack, her high calibre rifle pressed tightly against her armoured shoulder. Tendrils of purple energy arced towards the bullhead, hitting the vehicle from different angles. The aircraft shook but kept flying. With a swing of her wand, another blast rocketed towards the vehicle, conjuring storm clouds above it.

The woman flicked her hand down, and icicle shards lodged themselves into the aircraft, but it stubbornly kept flying. A new figure appeared with their arms lighting up with fire. A ball of fire shot towards the woman in front of Six, who conjured a shield, deflecting the attack. The ground around her suddenly started to light up.

The ground erupted into a pillar of fire, the woman backflipping away from the explosion, shards of the rooftop sent in all directions, before being manipulated and sent back towards the bullhead. Fireballs intercepted it before the shard arrow reformed, separating into three separate tendrils, circling the aircraft. They circled for a few seconds before a wave of fire from the mysterious figure obliterated the circling shards.

Red stepped up, her scythe collapsing into a high powered rifle, sending shots towards the figure, Artemis followed suit, firing her own rifle. The figure blocked the rounds, before waving a hand. Glowing circles appeared behind the trio. Six rolled, popping her barrier as the rooftop behind her exploded. She spun around in time to see the aircraft fly away and snapped off the final round in the magazine, putting a reasonable hole into the aircraft's hull for the type of round she fired. Six growled lightly, relaxing her arm on her propped knee. Tuning out the pair behind her, Six mulled over recent events. A tap on the shoulder drew her out of her thoughts, and Artemis came face to face with the older woman.

"I'm going to have to ask you to come along as well." Artemis shrugged in reply, magnetizing the ammunition-starved weapon to her back.

* * *

AN: Thanks to a guest review under the title 'Umm' for pointing out several errors in my original writing of this chapter. While I did want Noble Six to receive some benefits, I didn't want a completely overpowered character that wouldn't fit into the type of story I'm attempting to tell. I hope you readers enjoy this chapter version as much as you did the first.


	2. Chapter 1: Enter Beacon

_**Chapter 1**_

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own RWBY or Halo Reach. All rights go to Rooster Teeth(RWBY) and 343i / Bungie(Halo Reach)

* * *

Noble Six and the girl, who introduced herself as Ruby, sat in a dark room. The room was dark grey, with a single light hanging above the table. The woman from before walked around behind the duo.

"I hope you realize that your actions tonight, will not be taken lightly, young lady." The woman scorned the young girl. "And you are not off the hook either," she said, referring to Artemis. Said super soldier rolled her eyes underneath her black visor as the woman continued. Trying to order a Spartan to do something?

You'd have better luck getting a rock to move up a hill.

"Your actions put others in great danger."

Artemis resisted the urge to smack her palm into her helmet. "They started it!" Ruby protested.

"If it were up to me, you'd be sent home," The woman continued, as if she hadn't been interrupted, " With a pat on the back,"

Six twitched, ' _Wait for it_ '

"And a slap on the wrist" She looked at the two, before smacking her crop on the table, Ruby barely dodging the smack with an ' _eeek'_.

' _And there it is._ ' Artemis turned her head ever so slightly, her eyes locked back on the woman's crop.

"But there is someone here who would like to meet you. _Both_ of you," She emphasized.

Six raised an eyebrow, her attention now undivided, locked onto a figure walking into the room. The man carried a plate of cookies and a coffee mug in his hands and a datapad in the crook of his arm. He had silver/white hair, wore a green shirt with a vest, and a black suit jacket over top. He sported strange glasses and a green cowl on his neck, with a pin-up cross adorning it. He also wore dark green pants and black shoes. The man was important, the Spartan noted, her second-long observation complete.

"Ruby Rose," The man started, leaning in. "You…" he paused "have silver eyes." Ruby, who was confused, only muttered a quick 'um' before the man started again.

"So. Where did you learn -" He gestured to the screen, "- to do this?"

"Signal Academy," Ruby replied, albeit slightly hesitant.

The man now had given Ruby his undivided attention. "They taught you… to use one of the most dangerous weapons ever designed?"

"Well… one teacher in particular," Ruby replied. The man placed the plate of cookies in his hand on the table in front of little red. Hesitantly, Ruby started to eat the provided cookies.

"It's just that, I've only ever seen one scythe wielder of that skill before," The man paused briefly, "A dusty old crow," Ruby mumbled something, garnering a look from the man.

"Sorry, that's my uncle Qrow. He's a teacher a signal." Ruby started doing some motions with her hand. Six briefly lost interest until the man set his mug down, withdrawing her wandering mind back to the man.

"So I've noticed. And what is an adorable girl, such as yourself, doing at a school designed to train warriors?" He questioned.

"Well…" Ruby replied, "I want to be a huntress."

"You want to slay monsters?" He remarked. Six detected a sliver of humour in his voice. Six zoned out briefly, trying to figure out what she would end up doing now, on this new world. Six rolled through her options, before deciding on becoming one of these 'huntresses'.

Anything that would help someone as abnormal as her blend into the local populace, while keeping the UNSC - and more importantly, _ONI's_ \- eyes away. It seemed this was as good as any present option.

"… Do you know who I am?" The man questioned, a half smile adorning his face

After a moment of debate, Ruby replied, "Your professor Ozpin. The headmaster of Beacon." The man smiled slightly, "Hello."

Ruby replied instantaneously. "Nice to meet you."

The man turned his attention to the Spartan. "And who might you be?" He asked, his tone unchanged from his introduction with Ruby. After a minute of debate, she told him her name.

"Artemis. Artemis Rivera." She hesitated, answering the man's question.

"You want to come to my school?" The man turned serious.

"More than anything," Ruby replied.

Ozpin glance at Artemis for her answer, receiving a shrug and a nod in response. He looked to the woman on his left, who released an unimpressed ' _Hmph'_.

"Well, Okay." Ozpin surmised, providing his answer. Now, however, he turned his attention to the armoured person sitting next to Ruby. Artemis stared back, her black visor meeting brown ones. "If I may, are you human or faunus?"

"Human," Artemis answered instantly.

"I see, could you remove your helmet for us?" the professor asked.

She debated doing so, before hesitantly bringing her tacpad up, her right hand moving to the screen. She would indulge the trio that was here. She would do more than remove the helmet.

' _I'll just remove the armour,_ ' Artemis decided, suppressing a shiver.

Finding the necessary option, the super soldier unequipped the armour from her body, a dark light obscuring her for a brief moment. When the obscuring darkness died down, she returned into their vision, her tacpad becoming a small touchscreen device on the table in front of her. She heard Ruby release a surprised gasp, and Ozpin raised an eyebrow in interest.

"Interesting. I was not expecting one as young as yourself," Ozpin noted. "As for my next question, who are you?"

"You mean, other than the name I've just given?" The Spartan asked flatly. The man didn't flinch from the Spartan's tone, folding his hands beneath his chin. The Hyper-Lethal assassin scowled lightly. "Formally, I am a Spartan-III, part of _BETA_ company, identification number three-one-two."

The man was silent, as was the woman next to him, her arms crossed over her chest with her riding crop against her shoulder. Ozpin watched a brief clip on the datapad several times. After 32 seconds, by Artemis' count, Ozpin set it down and turned back to the blue-eyed Spartan.

"What is a Spartan, exactly?" He questioned. Artemis held back a sigh.

"We're super soldiers, engineered to be the perfect combatants. I am one of the few surviving third-generation Spartans. The second-generation Spartans are in even fewer number than my generation. Nearly thirty years of war saw to that." Artemis answered, carefully editing her statement clear of any _really_ classified material.

"Thirty years?" Glynda interjected, "I'm sorry, but I find that a little hard to believe. We haven't been in war for seventy years."

"I don't expect you to. But it is simply fact where I'm from. We aren't waging war on a continental or planetary scale like your probably thinking - but on a galactic one." Artemis continued.

"We aren't waging this war for territory, or planets or star systems. We wage war in the name of survival. Our enemy, calling themselves The Covenant, first appeared at the outer colony of Harvest in 2525. Harvest was an agricultural world, with a population of merely 3 million. Very few people escaped the planet's initial attack."

"How bad did it get?" Ruby asked, almost quietly. Six looked to Ruby, her answer clearly laced with restrained rage.

"They turned the majority of the planet surface to glass, leaving no one alive. They killed all who tried to escape. Military and Civilian. Every man, woman and child. It didn't matter to them. The surface heated to the point that it turned to molten glass."

The Spartan continued unwavering."As of today, September 13th in the year 2552, the UNSC, Earth and her colonies have suffered over 23 billion casualties. Civilian and Military alike. We have less than ten planets out of the eight-hundred we had pre-war. That is our current state."

The silence in the room was deafening to the Spartan, even as she took in the horror-filled looks of the other three in the room. The casualty number, while classified, was low enough that all officers of every branch higher than Commander within the UNSC knew about it. But Six was nothing if not resourceful.

Ozpin was the first to snap out of his horror. "Well then… Thank you for sharing that with us. I suppose we end this meeting, yes? It is quite late." Artemis and Glynda nodded. Artemis looked to Ruby, who was still shocked.

Six suppressed a scowl, pulling Ruby to her feet, snapping the girl out of her shock. "Please be at the landing pad by 10 AM." Glynda reminded them, leaving the room.

* * *

Clad in a simple outfit consisting of jeans, a dark shirt, a leather jacket, and steel-toed, calf-high boots, the Spartan did her best to blend in. As everyone boarded the aircraft heading to Beacon, Artemis sat near a window and lost herself in her thoughts. The last the Spartan saw, Little Red was being greeted by, who the Spartan assumed, was her older sister. The TV 'screen' snapped Six out of her brooding with its obnoxious noise.

"... The robbery was lead by the nefarious criminal, Roman Torchwick, who continues to evade authorities. If you have any information on his whereabouts, please contact the Vale Police Depa-"

Six didn't care to listen to anything afterward until it was abruptly cut off only seconds later. The news story was replaced by the Huntress she and Ruby met the night before. "Hello, and welcome to Beacon!" She started off.

"Who is that?" She heard Ruby's sister ask, her question answered a second later.

"My name is Glynda Goodwitch. You are among the privileged few who have received the honor of being selected to attend this prestigious academy." Glynda continued, "Our world, is experiencing an incredible time of peace,"

At this Artemis scoffed quietly to herself. ' _Sure you are._ '

For a Spartan like her, the _battlefield_ was peace.

"And as future Huntsmen and Huntresses, it is your duty to uphold it." The recording continued. "You have demonstrated the courage needed for such a task, and now it is our turn, to provide you with the knowledge and training, to protect our world."

The Hologram faded away as if it was never there in the first place.

"Huh… Wasn't expecting that at all…" Artemis muttered to no one in particular.

She heard several surprised gasps and looked out the window. The Spartan nodded in appreciation at the view. The school, Beacon, Six recalled, sat on the edge of a cliff and overlooked a lake. To the Spartan, the campus' design reminded her of the Middle Ages and the castles built during that age of humanity's history. The greenery around it reminded her of Camp Currahee on Onyx. Thick forests and flat plains. A familiar dark-haired girl screeched, jumping away from her blonde haired sister. The blonde's boot was covered in vomit, and probably soaking through the cloth material.

Artemis sat back in her spot, partially zipping the leather jacket. To anyone else, it looked like the Spartan was lost in the beauty that passed the window of the transport. In reality, Artemis was tuning herself to her to the new environment, attempting to give herself a sense of familiarity with her new surroundings. While they weren't as heavily augmented as her eyes, Artemis' hearing was trained to a fine point during her career in service to the UNSC and The Office.

They had to be, for her to do her job.

She could hear different conversations between students. There was a group of four boys seventeen feet away at ninety-seven degrees to where she was facing. She could also hear Ruby coming towards her with her sister, the super soldier guessed. Artemis turned her blue eyes onto the duo approaching her.

"Hi, Artemis!" Ruby waved happily. Artemis smiled lightly.

"Hello, Ruby." Artemis slowly stood, her six-foot-six-inch frame easily towering over Yang and Ruby. "Oh, and this is my sister, Yang!"

Yang extended her hand, and the Spartan took it carefully. Artemis applied light pressure and Yang responded in kind, appearing to grip as hard as she could. Artemis' smile grew a bit more.

"Nice to meet ya." Yang finally greeted, withdrawing her hand.

"The pleasure is mine. Artemis Rivera." Artemis fell silent for a moment afterward, in reality about five seconds. "You're a brawler, yes?"

"Yep." Yang grinned, extended one of two gauntlets.

"Nice to see some people aren't afraid of getting up close and personal," Artemis said. Yang nodded and flipped the Spartan's question back at her. Artemis shrugged.

"I don't have one, I suppose. I've got short to long ranged weaponry, as well as knives." Yang whistled appreciatively, nodding her head. Ruby's eyes widened and she started bouncing on the spot.

"Oooh, can I see your weapons? Please?" The small girl practically begged, repeating 'please' several more times. The Spartan huffed quietly.

"She won't stop until you say 'Yes'," Yang added in helpfully.

"Alright. I guess. But after orientation." Artemis relented.

She hid it well, but Artemis wanted to bury a knife in something out of annoyance. The Spartan sat back down as Ruby stopped bouncing, clearly deflated. Artemis put her attention to the window, as did the sisters, as their transport began slowing. Beacon took up most of the window, the grayscale styling if the Academy's walls looking out of place among the green that surrounded it.

"Well… here we go, "Artemis muttered.

Yang and Ruby nodded in agreement, even if the Spartan hadn't been addressing them. As the ship docked, 'Vomit boy' ran to the nearest trash can and emptied what remained of his stomach's contents. The trio walked down the smooth stone path towards the school. Yang and Ruby both openly gaped, easily impressed by the school. Artemis, on the other hand, was only slightly impressed.

' _It still doesn't compare to the view of a planet from space. Nothing really does_ ,' The Lone Wolf mused to herself. Artemis shook her head at Ruby, who was fawning over the new weapons everyone carried. Suddenly, Yang's friends appeared and whisked said girl away, leaving Ruby spinning, and Artemis caught off guard.

' _Bad Spartan_ ' Artemis chastised herself. A crash drew her attention to Ruby, who was on the ground, amidst several suitcases, and had a girl in a white skirt yelling at her.

"Sorry? Do you have any idea the damage you could've caused?" Ruby picked up a random case, only for the other girl to snatch it out of her hands.

She started shaking a vial of red 'Dust' she had procured from the case. Artemis watched as Ruby sneezed and a miniature explosion resulted. The veil of red dust went flying, landing at the feet of a girl dressed in black. Artemis lowered her arm from her face, listening as the conversation went from bad to funny in the span of not ten seconds. Artemis caught Ruby calling the girl 'Princess' and she allowed a small smirk on to her lips. The girl that picked up the vial of dust further roasted the Heiress - Weiss Schnee. The aforementioned girl stormed away with a growl.

'Vomit boy' walked over and helped the younger girl to her feet.

"I'm Jaune," the blonde introduced himself.

"Hey," Ruby said in realization, "Aren't you the guy who threw up on the ship?" Ruby snickered.

Jaune went red in embarrassment and the Spartan decided to take some measure of pity on the boy. Pocketing her Tactical Pad - a device probably cost half as much, if not more than the Academy - Artemis approached the duo.

"You good?" She asked. Ruby nodded with a smile. Satisfied, the Spartan extended her hand to Jaune and introduced herself. "Artemis."

"Jaune. Nice to meet you."

* * *

A while later, Jaune, Ruby, and Artemis arrived at the initiation ceremony after getting lost for several minutes. Ruby went to join her sister while Artemis stood near the back, easily seeing the entirety of the stage thanks to her abnormal height. Another girl stood beside Artemis, and the Spartan gave her a slight nod. The bronze armored girl gave one back. The Spartan returned to scanned the room, mentally picking the best exits possible, labeling them by accessibility, priority and then probability. A sharp noise over the audio system drew the Spartan's attention to the stage, where Headmaster Ozpin stood, patiently waiting.

"I'll… keep this brief," He opened "You have traveled here today in search of knowledge. To hone your craft, and acquire new skills. And when you have finished, you plan to dedicate your life to the protection of the people. But I look amongst you, and all I see is wasted energy, in need of a purpose. Direction. You assume knowledge will free you of this, but your time at this school with prove that knowledge can only carry you so far. It is up to you, to take the first step." he concluded, walking away from the microphone.

"Tonight, you will gather in the ballroom, tomorrow, you initiation begins. Be ready. You are dismissed." Glynda announced, concluding the ceremony.

"Did he seem… almost not there to you?" Artemis asked the girl next to her.

"Mhmm. It's like… he had something bigger on his mind." the red-headed girl replied.

"Well… he does run the school, so it's certainly plausible." Artemis muttered back, "We haven't been formally introduced, I'm Artemis Rivera," the Spartan extended her hand. The other girl grasped it, as firmly as Yang had, a couple of hours before.

"Pyrrha, Pyrrha Nikos." She responded in kind.

"Let's get to the ballroom, we can chat more there," Artemis recommended. Pyrrha nodded.

* * *

 **~~~~~Ballroom~~~~~**

* * *

Artemis selected a spot against the wall, a window above her head. The Spartan hadn't bothered changing into anything else. If she was changing, she was going into her armor. She could suffer a few more hours in her current attire instead of feeling exposed further.

"Hey, Artemis," Said girl looked up, meeting the bright green eyes of Pyrrha.

"Hey," she greeted, inviting Pyrrha to sit with her. The other girl accepted, rolling out her sleeping bag and setting a knapsack against the wall next to her.

Artemis engrossed herself into her TacPad, learning as much about every function she could. As much as she hated it, the Spartan knew she couldn't wear her armor as much as she had in the past. There was no war going on here. Not yet. And so she settled with tinkering and preparing. Her neural lace chilled as the Spartan managed to sync the TacPad with it. With that solved, she prepared for the initiation coming up in the next few hours. Her Designated Marksman Rifle and Magnum were prepared in a few minutes as well. Artemis glanced at Pyrrha, who was engrossed in a novel. Taking a final look around the place that had become her home in the span of fewer than twenty-four hours, Artemis let her head thump quietly against the wall behind her.

Her hands curled around the dog tags on her neck, and the Spartan raised them once more. And once more, she carefully read over them, wiping her thumb across the scorched surface of the two tags. Her mother's name had a carefully added cross to it, while the four names on the back of her Service ID tag had none. Artemis carefully held the tags within her hands, before tucking them inside her shirt. Fixing her collar to hide the chain, the Spartan turned her attention to the ceiling.

"Hey, Artemis?" Pyrrha asked quietly. The spartan tilted her head, showing that she was listening. "Are you going to sleep?"

The Spartan nodded slightly in response. Pyrrha turned from the Spartan and rested fully against her pillow, falling asleep moments later. Artemis, however, had no plans on falling asleep. She still hated the feeling of not fully knowing where she was, and in the fact that she couldn't wear her armor everywhere she went.

' _New place. Same damn problems._ ' Artemis smirked dryly at the thought. Tomorrow was going to be interesting.

Of that, the Spartan had no doubt.


	3. Chapter 2: Initiation

_**Chapter 2**_

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own RWBY or Halo Reach. All rights go to Rooster Teeth(RWBY) and 343i / Bungie(Halo Reach)

* * *

 **~~~~~Ballroom~~~~~**

* * *

Artemis checked her tactical computer for the second time in five hours.

Ironically enough, it was five am.

Despite her efforts, the Spartan had fallen asleep and gotten a good two-hour power nap. Upon her waking, Artemis had begun her tinkering, passing the time by designing paints for her weapons. She shifted in her spot and close her eyes for a moment, once more basking in how quiet the ballroom really was. The Spartan reopened her eyes, grabbed her Tactical Pad and left the building. The Lone Wolf was greeted by the first warm rays of Remnant's sun peaking over the horizon. The Spartan hissed silently and disappeared into a small group of trees and began her usual routine, but at half capacity.

It wouldn't do her good to tire out before initiation started, but Artemis kept going for more than an hour, with short breaks between each exercise she completed. The Spartan dropped from the tree branch above her and checked the time.

06:30

Satisfied, Artemis began making her way back to the Ballroom. Thinking better of it, the Spartan turned towards the bathrooms instead. It took the Spartan a moment to find the showers. Making sure she was the only one, the Spartan turned on the water. She let the cool water flow over her, letting out a relaxed sigh as the water washed away dirt and grim. The bathroom door opening brought the Spartan out of her state of bliss and she shut down the water, dried herself and prepared for the day. Dressed in a copy of what she wore the previous day, Artemis pulled her hair into a short ponytail. The purple blood had been partially washed away, much to the Spartan's approval.

"Would all first-year students please report to Beacon cliff for initiation. Again, all first-year students report to Beacon cliff immediately," Glynda's voice echoed over the PA system.

"Oh this is going to be fun," A smirk flashed across Artemis' face.

* * *

 **~~~~~Beacon Cliff~~~~~**

* * *

As soon as everyone was properly assembled, Artemis gazed at the line of people standing on the launch pads. Compared to quite a few of the kids in the line, the Spartan was a proverbial genius. The pad more than likely had enough power to propel her and her half-ton armour into the forest below. A bunch of other first years stood to her left, along with Pyrrha and Weiss. Ruby, Yang, and Jaune were at the other end, to her right.

"For years, you have trained to become warriors." Ozpin spoke, "And today… your abilities will be evaluated in the emerald forest."

"Now, I'm sure many of you have heard rumours about the assignment of teams." Glynda said, "Well, allow us to put an end to your confusion. Each of you will be given teammates. Today."

"These teammates will be with you for the rest of your time here at Beacon," Ozpin interjected, "So, it is in your best interest to be paired with someone whom you can work well." Ozpin paused. "That being said… the first person you make eye contact with after landing will be your partner for the next 4 years."

Ruby gaped "What?!", while another girl said, "see, I told you."

Artemis took a breath, her eyes locked on the dense green forest below. _That_ certainly made things interesting.

"After you've partnered up, make your way to the northern end of the forest." Ozpin continued again, ignoring interruptions. "You will meet opposition along the way. Do not hesitate to destroy everything in your path… or you will die." Ozpin concluded momentarily.

"I guess that means the forest itself, right?" A voice snarked quietly from the Spartan's left.

"You will be monitored, and graded for the duration of your initiation." He looked to Glynda "But our instructors will not intervene."

Artemis narrowed her eyes a fraction, ' _It's an initiation, of course they won't intervene.'_

"You will find an abandoned temple at the end of the path, containing several relics. Each pair, must choose one, and return to the top of the cliff. We will regard that item, as well as your standing and grade you appropriately. Are there any questions?" He concluded.

"Yea, um sir-" Jaune started.

"Good, now take your positions," Ozpin interrupted.

Artemis slid her foot back a quarter step, rotated her body sideways and tensed her muscles for launch. Jaune asked another question, but the catapults launching drowned the blonde's voice out. The boy with a buzzcut next to her launched and Artemis followed a couple of seconds after. In the one-hundredth of a second to launch her, Artemis could feel the pad move with several tons of force, catapulting the Spartan airborne. The force was equal to no less than a quarter-ton of force per square inch. With her TacPad securely attached to her wrist, the Spartan brought her arms closer to her body as she reached the apex of her launch, increasing the speed and rate of descent.

As she descended, the Spartan swore she heard screams coming from someone.

Spreading her arms away from her body, Artemis slowed down enough to bring her TacPad to her wrist, equipping her armour and weapons. With the ground rapidly approaching, the spartan activated her hard light barrier; crashing through a few tree branches before making contact with the ground.

"That wasn't so bad… then again, fall from the atmosphere, nothing seems that bad anymore." She muttered to herself. A screaming Jaune went sailing overhead, much to the Spartan's amusement, with a gold and red spear lodged in his hood. She smiled lightly, pulling her Mark V[B] helmet off her belt. With a hiss, it sealed. Her HuD popped to life, with a secondary bar filled directly below the shields. Pulling the DMR from the magnetic strips on her back, the Spartan began walking.

After a few moments, she had her first encounter with Remnant's aggressors. The Grimm. Up ahead, a trio of black bears - Ursai - blocked her path, teeth bared and growling at the approaching spartan. Their heads were covered in white bone-like armour, and red eyes. Raising her DMR, Artemis flicked the safety of the weapon and fired three times in stride. Each round punctured a separate Ursa but did nothing more than annoy them. They charged the approaching Spartan. Four more rounds spat out of the DMR, downing the first mutated bear. The remaining two, despite the black smoke rising from the holes in their heads, continued their charge at the Spartan, flanking the super soldier. Casually, Artemis placed her DMR back onto the powerful magnets flanking her armour's power supply. Settling into a CQC stance, Artemis pulled twin six-inch-bladed knives from their sheaths in her shoulder pauldrons.

The first Ursa charged the Spartan, aiming to bite off her head and end it then and there. Unfortunately for the Ursa, the Spartan had a different objective. Pivoting on a point, Artemis drew one of the blades along the beast's flank, creating a shallow cut. It joined its brethren with a slight whimper. The Lone Wolf narrowed her eyes, knives ready once more.

A small part of her mind wondered how such a turnout would occur on Earth.

Fighting one Ursa with two eight-inch bladed knives was a challenge. Fighting two, however, was seemingly unheard of. Apparently, no one told the Spartan as she charged the two, reaching her top speed of more than 70 km/h and shoulder checked the wounded Ursa back several feet. The third pounced immediately and got a face filled with the soul of a Mjolnir boot. It had much the same effect the shoulder check had and sent the third backward, tumbling head over heels in a swirl of dust. Artemis glanced to her left, towards her objective, and where a scream had originated. She needed to get moving, but first…

Artemis jumped, allowing the Ursa to plow into each other. Twisting in the air, the Spartan drew her DMR and fired twice, ending the one of the two remaining Ursa. Artemis landed in a crouch as the third Ursa rounded back on her. Wisely, it chose to turn and retreat, leaving the Spartan alone once more. She collected her discarded blades and placed them back in her shoulder pauldrons.

Now, about that scream...

* * *

It didn't take the heavily armoured supersoldier long to get to the source of the screams while running at a full sprint of just over 70 km/h. Artemis entered a clearing, DMR raised. The quantum mirrors in her pauldrons registered movement, and the motion tracker displayed it. A familiar flash of red had the Spartan holding steadfast. Pyrrha barged through the bushes, quickly followed by a giant scorpion the size of… a Scorpion Main Battle Tank.

Artemis raised an eyebrow and emptied the remaining rounds in the DMR's clip. It didn't do much, as five rounds created grooves in the armour, but the sixth found a small beady eye. The beast roared in pain and anger.

"Ahhh! Why? Ahhh! Pyrrha! Ahhhh! Pyrrha!" Jaune cried. Said girl spun on her heel with her spear in hand. Artemis kept her helmet locked onto the Deathstalker, all the while reloading her DMR with a fresh magazine.

"This is not the relic! It's not! Ahhh! Do something!" Jaune continued screaming, scared out of his mind.

"Jaune, whatever you do, don't let-" The giant scorpion, apparently having had enough of Jaune holding onto it and screaming, threw the blonde across the forest and turned it's attention back to the spear-wielding huntress-in-training and the battle-hardened Spartan-III.

"-go." Pyrrha finished.

"We should probably run. Now." Artemis recommended, clamping her DMR to her back. Fighting such a monster in dense trees like this was not something the tactically-advanced mind of the Spartan agreed with.

Pyrrha's response was to run off, closely followed by the Spartan. Artemis kept her eyes on their surroundings, waiting for a good amount of open ground in which to deal with the enemy that decided keeping up with a jogging Spartan was fun and games. Its constant roars had begun to irritate Artemis, and she dropped a pinless frag grenade in response. It exploded, and the Stalker snapped at them with a pincer. It gave chase again, using its claws and stinger in conjunction with each other, forcing the two warriors to continuously dodge. The process repeated itself three times more before they reached a clearing, where, either by coincidence or luck, was where the others were gathered, and the location of their objective.

Artemis kicked it into overdrive and fired past Pyrrha, covering the hundred-meter gap between the forest edge and the group of students in a fraction over five seconds. She slowed to a stop next to a green dressed man with a pink lock of hair. The Deathstalker stopped at the edge of the forest, it's pincers snapping in earnest. The once white armour was smoking and was covered in more than a few scorch marks.

"How could you leave me?!"

High above the group of students, Weiss Schnee was dangling off the claw of a Nevermore.

"I said 'Jump!'..." Ruby replied.

"She's going to fall," The black haired girl from the previous day muttered.

"She'll be fine," Ruby assured.

"She's falling." The green dressed teen and Artemis state at the same time, in an eerily similar tone.

Somehow along the way, Artemis and Pyrrha had outrun a thrown Jaune, as said boy became a cushion for the Heiress, landing roughly in a heap on the ground.

"My Hero," Weiss muttered sarcastically.

Jaune groaned pitifully, "My Back."

Pyrrha slid along the grass, coating her right side in a giant green stain, climbing to her feet with a heavy breath.

"Great! The gang's all here, now we can die together!" Yang remarked, her voice dripping in sarcasm. Her sister, however, apparently didn't get the memo.

"Not if I can help it." Ruby retorted, charging headlong towards the Deathstalker.

"Ruby wait!" Yang scolded, reaching out for her sister.

"D-do-don't worry! Totally fine!" Ruby stuttered, climbing to her feet after being knocked back by one of the Stalker's giant pincer.

Artemis quickly changed her DMR for the UNSC high-calibre sniper and squared the rifle's Oracle sight on one of the Grimm's larger eyes. She fired and a loud clap of thunder echoed from the weapon, startling the students around her. The round smacked the stalker dead in the eye, slowing its progress considerably and the beast roared in irritation. The very same beast casually shrugged off the lighter calibre rounds from Crescent Rose.

The Nevermore decided that now was the opportune time for it to interfere once more as it fired a spread of projectiles. Ruby managed to dodge some, but not all. One snagged her cloak and viciously stopped the speedy little girl. Yang had stopped well short, fear overriding most of her cognitive functions as she watched her sister. Six had her weapon still on the Stalker and fired again, only for this round to bounce off the thick bone armour of the Deathstalker's face. She fired the other two, much to the same effect as the second. The only sign of impact was the trenches on the bone that anything had hit it in the first place.

Artemis narrowed her eyes further unimpressed, switching from the standard to HVAP rounds as the situation continued to become worse.

"Ruby, get out of there!"

"I'm trying!" Ruby shot back, desperately trying to free her cloak.

The Deathstalker was on top of the younger girl, and Ruby's silver eyes widened in fear as she stopped attempting to free herself. The stinger descended, only stopped short by Weiss' quick actions in freezing the deadly object. She lowered her rapier to the side and accompanied Ruby back to the group once the short girl managed to free herself. Yang sighed in relief and joined her sister's side.

"Guys, that thing's circling back," Jaune helpfully pointed out, "What are we going to do?"

"Look," Weiss stated, "There's no sense in dilly-dallying. Our objective is right in front of us."

"She's right, our mission is to grab an artifact and make it back to the cliffs," Ruby interjects.

"Alive," Artemis points out, her helmet deepening her voice, "These things are just going to follow us. They have most of the advantages. Strength, speed, time, endurance."

Ruby nods "There's no point in fighting these things."

"Run and live, That's an idea I can get behind." Jaune chipped in, taking a rook while Ruby grabbed a knight. The cracking of ice drew their attention back to the struggling Deathstalker.

"Time we left," Ren deadpans. Artemis nodded her head in agreement.

"Right. Let's go," Ruby nodded.

The group of nine zigzagged through trees for a few minutes, closing in on the cliffs. They entered a set of ruins and split into two groups. Pyrrha, Blake, Jaune, and Weiss went left. Ren, Nora, Ruby, Yang, and Artemis went right. Both groups took refuge behind separate columns as the Nevermore circled. Jaune gave her a strange look from across the clearing as the Spartan loaded the red-striped box magazine into the massive rifle.

"Someone's impatient," Artemis spoke over the roar of the Nevermore, yanking the firing bolt of the weapon.

"Well, that's just great!" Yang pipes up. Trees behind the group start breaking.

"Oh, fantastic. It's back for round three," Artemis scowled heavily behind her helmet. This giant scorpion reminded her of Hunters: they don't go down easy.

"Oh man, Run!" Jaune instructs as he left the refuge of the column, the entire group following suit.

"Nora, distract it!" Ren suggests, and Nora was all too happy to oblige.

The Stalker snuck up on her, only to be repelled by Ren and Blake as they sliced at its eyes. Weiss jumped in and pulled Nora away. Artemis waited, her rifle at the ready as the stalker crested the ridge only a few feet behind Blake and Ren. The second it crested, however, it was met with a face full of High-Velocity rounds from Six's rifle. One impacted the tail, one buried itself in an already damaged eye, while the other two bounce harmlessly off its armour, but created more significant trenches.

The Deathstalker screeched in anger and pain.

"Go, go, go!" Pyrrha exclaims, her spear now a rifle, firing it from behind her shield, Ren joined her in distracting it.

The two pull back as its claws swiped at them. As the eight students and Spartan ran across the ancient bridge, the Nevermore appeared from around the heavy mist, and barrelled into the bridge, shattering the midsection. It crumbled away, leaving a fifty-foot gap between the two groups.

"Just great…" Artemis muttered as she reloaded.

Two bangs sounded behind them, as Nora and Jaune join the Spartan and on the other side. Nora slammed her hammer into the stalker's head. The pink-haired huntress quickly pulled the trigger to avoid its stinger but was clipped anyway and thrown back into Blake by the impact. Blake was sent flying over the edge, just out of reach of Artemis' outstretched hand. The Spartan's eyes narrowed momentarily, before watching as Blake piggybacked the Nevermore, slashed along the length of the beast several times, before joining Yang, Ruby, and Weiss on the other side. The Deathstalkers stinger dislodged the bridge.

"We gotta move," Jaune stated, leading the group like he'd been doing it for a couple years.

Everyone burst over to the other side. The stalker took a shot at Pyrrha, who deflects it off her shield, and smacked it with her spear in retaliation. The beast roars in anger, rearing back its second claw for a strike. Jaune intercepted that and gave Pyrrha an opening to knock back the offending limb. Artemis locked her rifle to her back and kicked the stalker in the face with a burst of speed. It roared in anger again as Ren suddenly appeared on its stinger with ninja-like grace, shooting the muscles holding the stinger to its owner. As Jaune and Pyrrha were knocked back, joining the resident Spartan, Nora fired several grenades at the beast, forcing it to shield itself from the explosives. Taking the opportunity, Pyrrha threw her spear directly into the monster's eye with accuracy that had the Spartan raising an eyebrow in appreciation.

The beast flung Ren off, sending him into a pillar of the ruins. Nora called out to him as the stalker tried to take another swipe, only to be intercepted by the brute strength of Artemis, her muscles taut as she kept the massive pincer away from the others. She grit her teeth, her armoured boots grinding against the old and degraded stone bridge. Jaune looked towards the stinger, catching sight of the dangling appendage.

"Pyrrha!" He calls.

"Done," is her response as she throws her shield, slicing the stinger off and impaling the beast with its own weapon.

"Nora," Jaune starts, "Nail it!"

"Heads up!" Artemis throws the pincer away, backflipping to Jaune, just as Pyrrha throws Nora into the air with her shield in an explosion of noise.

Nora, at the apex of her launch, fires her hammer into the sky, slamming into the Deathstalker with enough force to throw a fully armoured Artemis, Jaune, and Pyrrha over to the other side and land on solid ground. Artemis twisted in the air, dislodging loose stones and carving a shallow trench into the ground.

Nora fired her hammer once more, propelling herself over onto solid land. Jaune laid on his back while Artemis and Pyrrha stayed down on a knee, and Ren collapsing as he stumbled to the group. The other four stand, watching as soon-to-be-team RWBY takes on the Nevermore. They watch, as the Nevermore crashed into the cliffside, screeching back at the four girls that resided closest to it. They watch as Ruby runs up the cliffside, slicing the head off the Nevermore with a final scream.

"Impressive." Artemis sums up, removing her helmet with a hiss. "That was… a thing."

Everyone just nodded, while Jaune just said "Wow."

* * *

 **~~~~~Auditorium~~~~~**

* * *

"-Russel Thrush, Cardin Winchester, Dove Bronzewing, and Sky Lark. The four of you retrieved the black bishop pieces." Ozpin stated. "From this day forward, you will work together as… Team CRDL (Cardinal)," Ozpin paused "Led by, Cardin Winchester."

As soon as they were announced, Jaune, Ren, Nora, Pyrrha, and Artemis - who had swapped her attire back - walked onto the stage.

"Jaune Arc, Lie Ren, Pyrrha Nikos, Nora Valkyrie, and Artemis Rivera. The five of you retrieved the white rook pieces." Ozpin took a brief breath. "From this day forward, you will work together as… team JNPRR (Juniper)" Nora hugged Ren, as Ozpin paused again "Lead by… Jaune Arc!" Ozpin finished.

"Huh? L-lead by…" Jaune stuttered, surprised.

"Congratulations Young man," Ozpin congratulated. Pyrrha socked him in the shoulder, pushing him into the Spartan. Artemis cracked a small smile as she steadied the boy with her arm, allowing the crowd a good laugh at the scene. Pyrrha grinned in slight embarrassment.

"And finally, Blake Belladonna, Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, and Yang Xiao Long. The four of you retrieved the white knight pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as… Team RWBY(Ruby). Lead by… Ruby Rose." Ozpin announced. Yang hugged her sister in happiness.

"Looks like things are shaping up to be… an interesting year."

* * *

 **~~~~~Team JNPRR Dorm~~~~~**

* * *

The door to the dorm opened, allowing the newly christened team JNPRR to enter the room. The team spilled in, the required 5th bed already inside the room. Artemis claimed the one furthest to the right of the entrance, flopping onto the bed. The others claimed their own beds. Pyrrha took the one next to Artemis, and Jaune claimed the one in between the bookshelves, while Ren and Nora took the ones on the left.

"Today was interesting…" Artemis scowled. Pyrrha laughed lightly while Jaune groaned in agreement. "I can't wait for Duels in combat class…"

"Why is that?" Ren asked. Artemis gave him an ' _Are you serious?'_ look before she responded.

"Okay… A) it's combat class and B) It's combat class." The Spartan retorted with a friendly glare.

"And now she's glaring~" Nora teased. Six rolled her eyes at the girl in response.

"It's official. Night guys." Artemis muttered. A chorus of goodnights resounded from everyone. The Spartan was the last to fall asleep.


	4. Chapter 3: Spartan Education

_**Chapter 3**_

 **Disclaimer** : I do not own RWBY or Halo Reach. All rights go to Rooster Teeth(RWBY) and 343i / Bungie(Halo Reach)

* * *

The cool morning breeze circled inside the open windows of the dorm room, the chirping of birds echoing through the sky. Artemis stared out the window, deep in thought. Not even a week in this new world, and she was already in a school. The soon-to-be nineteen-year old let her right leg dangle out the window, her back finding support against the window frame. She turned her attention back to the thick book in her lap. She picked it up again. It was the third book the Spartan had delved into since she'd woken up… five hours earlier.

She glanced back into the room at her sleeping teammates. It seemed surreal to already be back on a team after hers had fallen one by one not three weeks earlier. Artemis rolled her shoulders and looked back out the window. The constant cool breeze had sapped the heat from the Spartan's right side, turning the skin a light shade of blue. It didn't bug the supersoldier, however, as she flipped to a new page in the book in her lap. Remnant had many interesting creatures but the Spartan paid close attention to any mentions of Grimm.

The Spartan checked her tactical pad again and swung back through the window, taking care as to not wake her new teammates from their rest. She readied the final pieces of her uniform. The Spartan rolled up the thigh-high socks and slipped into the calf-high, low-heeled boots and grabbed the thin, dark coat. Her blue eyes flickered to the sheathed blade on the nightstand she shared with her partner. She whisked it off as the alarm clock went off, immediately waking the rest of her team. She fastened a temporary holder for the knife and its sheath on her lower leg, hidden inside the boot. Artemis sat, watching her team bustle around the room, readying for the first day of class.

The Spartan's thoughts drifted to her old team. Carter - Noble One, ever the one to keep the coolest head out of them all, even in the heat of combat, dishing out orders. Kat - Noble two, the smartest of the bunch, the one to come up with crazy solutions, that work… usually.

Jun - Noble three, their 'eye in the sky' and resident sniper. A crack shot with a sniper, but the one to talk the most. Artemis smirked lightly at that. The one who was supposed to be the quietest - with the quietest role - was the loudest.

Emile - Noble four, close quarters specialist. Emile was the only Spartan Artemis knew that wanted the Covenant dead more than anyone else. And then there was Jorge - Noble five. The team's only Spartan-II and, surprisingly, the most sociable Spartan Artemis ever met.

The sounds of construction tools dragged the Spartan from her memories and to the present. Her team was almost ready. Nora was jamming things into her bag, much to Ren's exasperation as the Ninja attempted to get her to straighten her bag's contents. Jaune was doing something similar, though a bit more organized. Pyrrha was laughing at their antics. Yelling from across the hall brought the team's attention to the dorm room opposite them.

"It's 8:55 you dunce!" Weiss yelled at someone before rapid footsteps left the RWBY dorm room.

"8:55? Shit," Artemis muttered, standing up from her bed, rapidly checking her schedule for first class. Grimm studies with Port.

"Uhh, t-to class!" Ruby stuttered out, following Weiss down the hallway.

"Class? Wh-whaaa! Uullg," Jaune sputters out as Nora, Pyrrha, and Ren fall on top of him. Artemis rolled her eyes and dodged around the mess that was her teammates, following RWBY to first-period class.

"We're gonna be late!" Jaune panics, following his teammate to class. The group bolts through the courtyard, Artemis using her augmented speed to her advantage, a few meters ahead of everyone behind her.

* * *

 **~~~~~Grimm Studies, Professor Port~~~~~**

* * *

"Monsters! Demons… Prowlers of the night," Artemis snorted quietly, rolling her eyes in annoyance. "Yes.. the creatures of Grimm have many names." Professor Port continued.

' _And the ugliest thing on this planet'_ Artemis added silently. The Hyper-Lethal looked to her right, spotting Ruby asleep. She shook her head slightly.

"But I merely refer to them as 'Prey'. Hu-hah, Haha." Port added in, the gesture snapping Ruby awake. Artemis looked back to the professor. She swore she heard what sounded like an insect echo through the classroom. You didn't need to be an expert on body language to figure out that others felt the same way.

"Uhh… and you shall too, upon graduating from this prestigious academy!" Port exclaimed, dismissing his embarrassment.

' _Clearly'_ Artemis snarked in her head.

"Now as I was saying," Port started again "Vale, as well as the other three kingdoms-".

' _So that's where I am, huh'_ Artemis concluded.

"- are safe havens in an otherwise treacherous world. Our planet is absolutely teeming with creatures that would love nothing more than to tear you to pieces. And that… is where we come in." Port paused briefly.

"Huntsmen, Huntresses…-" Port winked at Yang, who looked very creeped out. Artemis suppressed a snort, finding a spark of amusement at the younger girl's embarrassment and discomfort.

"Individuals who have sworn to protect those who cannot protect themselves." Port stopped, " 'From what?' You ask. -".

' _Uhh… Lemme guess, Grimm?'_ Artemis pondered in amusement. "Why… the very world!" He stuck his left arm into the air.

' _Bullshit'_ Artemis scoffed silently and rolled her eyes. If there was logic there, the Spartan didn't see it. The entire class became as quiet as space itself, however briefly.

"Eyyy-yeah!" a student exclaimed from behind her. Artemis glanced back up to him, her eyebrow raised in annoyance; team RWBY looked at the kid like he was crazy. The kid popped down right after. Professor port continued on.

"That is what you are training to become…" Port paused "But first, a story."

Artemis zoned out then and there, choosing instead to review her notes, scanning for anything she didn't already figure out or learn in the heavy morning studying she had done. They were, unsurprisingly, not paying attention. And by they, she was referring about team CRDL, who were busy acting like idiots at the back of the class. Port clearly didn't care or didn't notice as he continued his story. Glancing back to the front, Artemis watched as the professor bowed.

"The moral of this story? A true huntsman must be honourable. A true huntsman must be dependable. A true huntsman must be strategic… well educated, and wise!" Port concluded. "So… who among you believes themselves to be an embodiment of these traits?" Port dropped the question onto the class.

"I do sir!" Weiss snapped out, her voice tense. Artemis pondered for a moment, raising her hand for a split second before dropping it back down, hoping he hadn't seen her hand.

"Well then, let's find out" Port concluded. His head turned to the right, towards two cages, both containing Grimm.

"Step forward and face your opponent," He replied. Port motioned to Artemis to come down to the floor as well as Weiss. Artemis rolled her eyes lightly, receiving a reassuring pat on her back from Pyrrha and a nod from the rest of her team.

' _A fight's a fight.'_ Artemis reasoned with herself.

She joined Weiss in the adjacent room and switched into her gear. While not using her armour, the Spartan was far from defenceless. Emile's kukri was strapped to her calf. She could keep the gore down, thanks to Grimm not possessing the same structure of organs and biological systems that living, breathing animals and mammals possessed. Artemis zipped up her leather jacket and ignored the surprised stares sent her way.

Artemis knew what she was doing.

She didn't need _children_ to tell her otherwise.

The Spartan drowned out the snarky reply Weiss had sent towards Ruby. Taking a few steps, the Spartan came to a rest a few feet away from her classmate. The rough leather of her brother's kukri met the rough skin of her palm and Artemis closed her fingers on the hilt. With a quick look around her, she drew a mental map in her head. With a heavy scowl, she acknowledged how cramped the fighting space ended up being.

"Alright! Let the match begin," With a single swipe of his axe-tipped Blunderbuss, Port released the two Grimm. Both looked a lot like wild boars with mammoth-like tusks.

Artemis swiftly side-stepped her opponent, letting the boar go sailing past. The clang of metal on bone gave the Spartan a good idea of what the Heiress had done.

"Haha! Weren't expecting that, were you?" Port laughed, slightly amused.

Artemis' eyes narrowed. The Boarbatusk charged again. With the deadly grace befitting a Spartan, the Lone Wolf raked Emile's knife along the Grimm's flank. Weiss seemed to be having a few issues herself, her rapier constantly meeting the bone-armour of the Grimm. Several things happened in the next couple seconds. Weiss was thrown back to the Spartan, separated from her weapon. Artemis glanced at the struggling Heiress. Artemis flicked her gaze back to the Grimm.

"What will you do without your weapon?" Port questioned, interest piqued by the turn of events. Artemis didn't miss how the Professor's hands tightened on his weapon.

Quiet gasps were let out amongst the room. The two Grimm were spinning like discs now. Port prepared to interfere but the Spartan stopped him by stepping forward and rolling her shoulders, dropping Emile's blade into its sheath inside her boots. The beasts charged and time dilated for the Hyper-Lethal. Spartan Time. The beasts drew closer, but the speed of which Artemis' brain was processing information was tens, if not a hundred times faster than the rotation speed the beasts moved at. Maybe a thousand in Spartan Time.

But it didn't mean they were slow.

Her arms snapped out like light itself, snagging the beasts by the tusks. The collision still forced the super soldier back, but she held her ground. She gritted her teeth, ignoring the stinging of the raw skin on her hands and the slight fatigue of her damaged aura. Weiss seemed to understand what the Spartan was doing and pierced Mynternaster's blade through the first and then sliced through the second.

And just like that, the fight was over.

"Bravo, Braa-vo," Port congratulated "it appears we are, indeed, in the presence of true huntresses in training. I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today, however. Be sure to cover the assigned readings, and, stay vigilant. Class dismissed," Port excused them, the bell ringing.

"Sheesh, what's with her?" She heard Jaune question. Weiss had stormed out after grabbing her notes and her bag.

Artemis shrugged at Jaune's question. She watched as Ruby chased after Weiss. She sighed, returning to her teammates to grab her things and following after Ruby out the door. "I'll catch up at next class, I've got something I want to tell Ruby," The Spartan spoke to Jaune.

"Yea, just, don't be late?" He joked good-naturedly. Artemis nodded, walking towards Ozpin and Ruby.

"-but a badge you wear constantly," Ozpin told her. She waited patiently for the headmaster to finish. The man acknowledged the new arrival with a nod, before returning his attention to the girl in front of him.

"If you are not performing at your absolute best… then what reason, do you give others to follow you?" Ozpin questioned, turning around "You have been burdened with a daunting responsibility, Ruby."

He glanced over his shoulder, "I'd advise you take some time… to think about how you will uphold it." Ozpin finished, walking off. Artemis walked up to Ruby as she glanced out the doorway at Weiss. Laying a hand on the younger girl's shoulder, Artemis imparted her own wisdom to the younger teen.

"Being a leader isn't just about giving others a reason to follow you. One must have courage, tenacity, and patience. One must be flexible and able to communicate - allowing their actions to speak as loud as their words"

Ruby sighed, as the Hyper-Lethal continued, "A leader must have a combination of humility and presence. To be able to listen to all of the ones underneath you, or in this case, with you. Your teammates." Artemis concluded, giving Ruby a pat on the shoulder.

"If you need someone to talk to or a different viewpoint, just ask." Artemis offered, walking towards second class. She arrived just before the bell, her teammates giving her a questioning look. She shook her head with a flat look.

"Later. Ask me later," was her answer.

* * *

 **~~~~~JNPRR Dorm~~~~~**

* * *

The JNPRR dorm was relatively quiet. Artemis was skeptical now, Nora is usually never as quiet as she is. Shaking it off, she returned her attention to the last question. Glancing up from her page, she looked around the circle they set up in the middle of the room. Quickly jotting the answer, Artemis placed the page in her book, closing it for the next day's class.

"Artemis, earlier, you'd explain what you said to Ruby." Ren opened up.

"I'm curious myself," Pyrrha stated, while Nora kept writing her answer down, Jaune diverting his attention to the black haired girl. Said girl raised her head from her arms, smiling lightly.

"I just gave her some things to think about, is all," Artemis replied, her voice clear as a crystal ball. Pyrrha shook her head with a small smile and ruffled her partner's hair. Artemis gave her a slight scowl as she ran a hand through it. She scowled at her teammates in turn as they laughed. The Spartan shook her head and smiled lightly. She shook her head, pulling herself off the floor, checking the time.

"We should probably get to bed. Class in the morning." Artemis pointed out, slightly disappointed.

" You sound sad that there are classes in the morning," Jaune piped up.

"Nah," she denied, "just rather not got to sleep. Unfortunately -" She pointed to the clock, 8:30 pm, "- we do have to. It's late," The Spartan finished. Nora slammed her book shut.

"Done!" she sang, startling the rooms other occupants. Artemis' head snapped towards the hyper Pinkett as the other occupants jumped in surprise.

"Nora," Jaune called. He stuck her tongue out at his teammate when she looked his way.

Nora just laughed harder, jumping on her bed. Artemis coughed out a laugh of her own, pulling herself into her bed. Even as the final light went out in the dorm room, the golden-ringed blue eyes of the Spartan glowed in the darkness.

* * *

 **~~~~~2 months later, Combat class~~~~~**

* * *

Jaune stood on the stage, leaning on his sword, panting. His opponent, Cardin, stood opposite him, relaxed as can be, his mace lazily sitting on his left shoulder. The man barked out a laugh. The rest of the class watched on as Jaune fruitlessly charged.

Cardin dodged the attack easily, twisting to the left, his mace already in full swing towards JNPRR's leader. Jaune barely got his shield in the way before contact, but the blow sent him careening across the stage, his shield now laying away from him. Jaune scrambled to his feet, letting out a cry, charging one final time, his strike this time being parried by Cardin. The walking tank easily overpowered a tired Jaune.

"This is the part… where you lose." He remarked, before kneeing Jaune in the stomach.

Artemis growled quietly from beside Pyrrha, garnering the girl's attention. Artemis' face was tinged pink in anger, and the normally calm golden blue eyes were narrowed dangerously. The redhead put her hand on the much taller girl's shoulder, shaking her head softly. Artemis fought against her anger and released a huff, settling for glaring at Cardin. The man raised his mace above Jaune, who lay on the floor. As he prepared to bring it down, a buzzer went, signalling the end of the match.

"Cardin, that's enough." Ms. Goodwitch interrupted, appearing back on the stage, stepping between the two duelists. Cardin stepped back, resting his mace against the ground, leaning on the weapon.

"Students, as you can see, Mr. Arc's aura has dropped into the red." Glynda continued, "In a tournament style duel… This would indicate Jaune is no longer fit for battle, and that the official may call the match." Artemis released a quiet sigh, glancing at her TacPad, Jaune's aura bar going from green to red.

"Mr. Arc, it's been weeks now, please try to refer to your scroll during combat. Gauging your aura will help you decide when it's appropriate to attack, or when it is better to move to a more… defensive strategy." She paused, Jaune sighed.

"We wouldn't want you to be gobbled up by a Beowulf, now would we?" She questioned. Cardin huffed.

"Speak for yourself," He muttered, eliciting a second quiet growl from Artemis. Pyrrha repeated her earlier gesture, giving her tall partner shoulder a soft squeeze this time. This was a first for JNPRR, seeing the incognito Spartan this angry. Artemis relented after a few moments again. Her eyes remained narrow, however.

"Remember everyone!" Glynda started again, "The Vytal Festival is only a few months away. It won't be long before students from the other kingdoms start arriving in Vale, so keep practicing!" She reminded the class. Artemis smirked in anticipation, shifting slightly from foot to foot.

"Those who choose to compete in the combat tournament will be representing all of Vale," Glynda concluded, the bell ringing. Artemis switched her attention to Jaune, who had a look of defeat on his face.

The hand on her shoulder fell away. Leaning over to Pyrrha, she whispered an idea in her ear, to which she responded with a nod and a smile, focusing her attention back to Jaune. The Spartan hopped onto the stage and walked over towards Jaune, offering her friend a hand. He accepted, allowing the blonde-haired Super Soldier to pull him to his feet.

"C'mon, let's go," Artemis suggested, nodding to the door. Jaune didn't respond, settling for following his teammates to the cafeteria.

* * *

 **~~~~~Cafeteria~~~~~**

* * *

"So… there we were, in the middle of the night…" Nora began, Artemis chuckled at the silliness of it.

"It was day," Ren corrected.

"We were surrounded by Ursai." Nora continued.

Ren corrected her again. "They were Beowolves."

"Dozens of them!" Nora exclaimed loudly, standing up. Artemis shook her head in amusement at her teammate's antics. Yang was listening, an expectant look on her face.

"Two of 'em…" Ren corrected again with a sigh.

"But in the end, they were no match. And in the end… Ren and I took them down." Nora continued. Artemis looked past Pyrrha towards Jaune, who was being uncharacteristically silent. She shared a worried look with Pyrrha and Ruby, the three girls returning their attention to the sulking leader of team JNPRR.

"-and made a boatload of Lien selling Ursa skin rugs," Nora concluded, sitting back down, a happy smile on her face. Artemis scowled to herself, looking back to the book in front of her.

Ren sighed "She's been having this recurring dream for nearly a month now."

"Jaune," Pyrrha started, concern laced in her voice. "Are you okay…?" Pyrrha questioned, resting her gauntleted forearm on the table.

"Uh?" Jaune snapped out of his stupor "Oh, yea. Why?"

"It's just that you seem a little…" Ruby started, trying to find the right words, "not okay..."

"Your sulking," Artemis interjected bluntly, resting her hands over her book. Pyrrha turned to give the Spartan a scolding look, before taking note of the genuine concern in her golden blue orbs.

"Guys, I'm fine… seriously, look!" Jaune let out a nervous laugh. No one was fooled by Jaune's facade. It had too many holes in it. Artemis frowned.

Mocking could be heard a few tables behind them. Her teammates and RWBY copied Artemis and Jaune's turns towards CDRL. A rabbit Faunus was surrounded by the four. It seemed no one else in the Cafeteria could be bothered to pay attention to the poor girl being bullied.

"Jaune, Cardin's been picking on you since the first week of school." Pyrrha pointed out, not buying into Jaune's act.

"Who? Cardin Winchester?" JNPRR's leader questioned. "Nah… he just likes to mess around, you know. Practical jokes!" He continued nervously.

"He's a bully," Ruby retorted flaty.

"Playing practical jokes involve in mercilessly challenging you to duels every day?" Artemis asked sarcastically, her eyes were still locked on the surrounded girl. While not fully accustomed to societal norms completely, the Spartan was sure practical jokes every day wasn't one of them.

"Oh please…" Jaune scoffed, "Name one time he's 'bullied' me." Jaune laughed nervously, throwing air quotes around 'bullied'. Artemis thought for a split second, as Pyrrha began talking.

"He's smacked your books out of your hands. He's activated your shield as you walked in a door." Pyrrha listed.

"He's shoved you into the rocket lockers as well," Ruby put in, unimpressed.

"He also challenges you to a duel every class, and hardly gives you an opportunity each time. He _also_ makes you do his homework for him," Artemis growled out, looking back towards CRDL's leader.

"He does?" Ren questioned. She didn't need to instincts to tell her both teams were staring at her. Artemis nodded silently.

"I didn't land far from the school." Jaune protested, turning away from the two.

"Jaune if you ever need help… just ask," Pyrrha tried.

"Ooh!" Nora piped up, "We'll break his legs," She suggested. Artemis nodded in agreement, holding her hand up for a fist bump, which Nora happily returned.

"I'll kick his ass in a duel…" Artemis nonchalantly suggested almost immediately after, a devious smile gracing her lips for a few seconds. Pyrrha sighed with a smile, giving the Spartan a knowing look.

"What?" the super soldier questioned, shrugging her shoulders. "It's going to happen sooner or later."

"Guys, really. I'm fine," Jaune insisted standing up, his tray in hand. "Besides, it's not like he's just a jerk to me; he's a jerk to everyone." Jaune continued.

"Yea, it's why he needs to be knocked down a few pegs," Artemis muttered, propping her head against her fist, elbow resting on the table.

"Ooww, that hurts!" The Faunus behind them yelped. "Please stop..." the girl pleaded.

"I told you it was real," Cardin commented, his voice smug.

"What a freak!" Thrush commented. The girl tried to run off, only to bounce off of Sky Lark, forcing her to endure more punishment from the four bullies.

"Atrocious. I can't stand people like him." Pyrrha commented angrily.

"He's not the only one," Blake spat out.

"It must be hard to be a Faunus," the blonde brawler of team RWBY commented sadly.

Artemis snarled, clenching her right hand into a fist so tight, the muscles on her hand seemed to strain beneath the surface of her skin. Yang shared a glance with a couple others, and even Nora seemed put off by the Spartan's anger. They all knew she was strong - stopping two spinning Boarbatusks with her bare hands was proof of that. When Pyrrha's attempts to calm the rage-filled Spartan failed, some of the surprised looks at the table morphed into fear. Usually, she could calm the Spartan, but the Amazon didn't have enough power to puncture the veil of anger Artemis expressed.

Ruby paled, her eyes wide as saucers as she clung to Yang. Jaune's own face had paled as well. JNPRR's leader stumbled back a step as he set his tray down on the table. And then the Spartan stilled. No one at the table moved.

Artemis stood to her full height and covered the short distance between the two tables in a dozen strides, grabbing Cardin's wrist as he made to grab the Faunus' ears again.

"The fu-" Cardin's words died in his mouth as he looked up at the visually calm Spartan. "What do you want?"

Despite his twisting, turning and pulling, Cardin couldn't free his wrist from the Spartan's iron grip. The girl and Cardin's teammates looked at Artemis in fear.

"Go," Artemis ordered the girl in the softest voice she could muster. It was fairly soft, all things considered. She didn't need to be told twice, weaving around the Spartan and out of sight. Parts of the Cafeteria, mainly the closest groups watched the encounter, while conversations continued on the far side of the room opposite the Spartan.

"Your defend that freak?" Cardin asked, insulted.

"I thought that obvious, Winchester." Artemis snarled lowly. "I don't like bullies. In fact, I prefer eliminating the problem, _permanently_." The Spartan lowered her voice considerably, but loud enough for Cardin to hear. She turned the man and pushed his head into the table. She spoke louder, allowing everyone to hear her challenge. "Combat room. One hour."

"And if I don't?" Cardin snarled weakly. Artemis pressed his arm higher slightly.

"Then you look like a coward, and you'll lose any credibility you have. At least you might save a sliver of dignity by accepting." The Spartan retorted with a snarl of her own. "Bring your teammates if you have to. It doesn't matter to me, Winchester."

"Fine. Just let me go." Cardin grit his teeth. The Spartan huffed and released his arm, glaring at the shorter male. Artemis twirled on her heel and proceeded back to her table. She gathered her book and bag and left a stunned JNPR and RWBY behind.

Payback was long overdue.

* * *

Artemis checked her blades once again. She surely hoped Cardin showed up, and with the rest of his team in tow. The boy needed a lesson, one the Spartan was going to impart onto him. And without fail, Cardin walked into the room in full armour and with his mace hanging off his waist. The Spartan gave her blades an experimental, but dangerous twirl. They were heavier than her magnum, evening out to about the weight of her assault rifle.

Each.

She clenched her hands tight against the handles and the remaining eighteen inches of the twin blades shot out like a cannon. Where the blades separate, the crack was barely visible to even her trained eye. A nice fit. The commotion and rumours that spread like a wildfire in an hour drew quite a crowd to the combat arena. The clanking of Cardin's armour stopped and the Spartan spared him a quick glance. He was nervous, evident by how tense his body was. And his shaking knees. He had no clue just how hard he was about to get beat by the Spartan.

"You'd better be ready, Winchester," Artemis spoke, breaking the pregnant silence that hung over the filled room.

The final occupant to enter the room was Glynda. She wasn't happy about her lunch being interrupted if the look of annoyance on her face was any indication. Glynda took up her position near the back of the stage, looking between the two combatants. Before Glynda had a chance to even open her mouth to announce the start of the duel, Artemis moved.

Gasps filled the room as she did. The two, four-foot-long, twin-bladed weapons in her hands crashed against Cardin's hasty defence. The mace-wielding bully was being forced back by his physically superior opponent. With a mighty shove to throw him off balance, Artemis gave Cardin a swift kick to the chest plate, leaving a visible dent in the sturdy constructed steel. Cardin stumbled back several steps and fell off the edge of the stage.

To add insult to injury, his aura was in the red as well.

The one-sided fight lasted less than ten seconds.

Goodwitch called the match and the Spartan gave the bully a warning glance before dropping off the stage herself and grabbing her things. She departed the building without so much as another word.

She heard the footsteps and clinking armour of her teammates behind her, but she carried on anyway, sitting a few dozen feet from the Beacon cliff that overlooked the Kingdom of Vale and the lake that separated them. A gauntleted hand rested on her shoulder, but she paid it no mind as she stared into the cloudy mid-afternoon sky. The spartan raked a scarred hand over her face.

"Hey," Jaune spoke finally, "You good?"

Artemis nodded but stayed silent. She wasn't happy that she acted out as she had. It was unbecoming of someone of her calibre and skill. There was no honour in what she had done, only anger. Silence reigned for a few moments more.

"You should go to class." Artemis snapped the silence, levelling her eyes on the skyline of Vale. Three other pairs of eyes trained on the back of the Spartan's head.

"We're a team. You're stuck with us." Pyrrha shook her head, sitting down next to the Spartan.

"Ooh! We can do storytime!" Nora exclaimed, plopping down in front of redheaded spearwoman. Ren sighed at Nora's enthusiasm but didn't counteract it. Jaune completed the circle, sitting on the Spartan's opposite side.

"Now you must understand that I will not answer every question I'm asked," Artemis warned. "Whose first?"

"I will." The green ninja spoke up, "Did you have a team before this?"

"I did. There were six of us. There was our leader, Noble One. He was calm, always level-headed even in midst of being shot at. He led _Noble_ through countless battles before I joined. There was Noble Two, our resident tech. She always managed to get into things she shouldn't, kind of like myself. She also generated some of the craziest plans that, somehow, still managed to work. Noble three was the most talkative of the team, despite being our sniper. He was an excellent shot and scout. Noble four was the most combat-hungry Spartan I'd ever met."

Artemis reached to her boot and pulled out a giant knife. "This was his knife. His most prized weapon." She twirled it between her fingers a few times before balancing it on her knee.

"Noble five was the biggest of our group. A friendly giant to friendlies, but an absolute tank to our enemies. He never hesitated to protect civilians. I was the sixth."

Jaune began next, half-heartedly explaining that he was one of eight siblings, the other seven of which were sisters. He mentioned, to his embarrassment, some pranks that had been pulled on him when he was younger and described a few camping trips to Anima.

Pyrrha went next, describing her childhood in a fair amount of detail. She described the training she received through school, her winning of the Mistral Regional Tournament and her journey through school and her eventual acceptance into Beacon. Ren went next, assisted by Nora. The two were reluctant, Artemis gathered as much. Neither really wanted to share many details, and so the team descended back into silence.

Each team member pulled out their own scrolls, save for Artemis who pulled up an old recording on her Tactical Pad. It displayed in a 3D image and from the appearance of Artemis' HuD. The figure opposite the Spartan wore white armour with a giant golden dome-like visor. The occasional purple arm would flash into the camera's line of sight, blocking a punch, or delivering one in return. Artemis smiled slightly as the visor made several big jerks before the white armoured person smacked, face down, into the floor of the massive room.

" _Fight concluded. Winner: Wisconsin"_ A synthesized voice filtered into the recording. The clip ended as Artemis hauled her opponent to his feet and the recording ended. The final image was a black visor and a purple helmet reflecting back into the camera in the orange visor.

"What was that?"

Artemis looked, sighting her teammates next to her. Ren had spoken.

"The fight? Or the recording?" She asked. Ren just nodded.

"The recording is, at this point, four years old," Artemis replied shortly. "I'd rather keep the details to myself."

And so she did. And the rest of the scheduled school day was spent in silence, beneath the shade of the few trees around them. Sure, it sent a few teachers into a panic, but Ozpin merely told them to let the students be. The headmaster assured them it was a team exercise in building trust.

* * *

 **~~~~~Ozpin's Office~~~~~**

* * *

Ozpin gazed out the window, watching over the academy grounds. Students hurried about as the bell went off, rushing to get to their next class. He took a sip of his coffee, returning to his desk. JNPRR's teachers had been sent into quite a fit of worry after their sudden disappearance after the duel.

The chime on the elevator went off and the doors opened to reveal Glynda, who had a viewscreen in her hands. Wordlessly, Ozpin granted the woman entrance to his office. With a click of her high heels, Ozpin turned away from his screen and looked towards Glynda. She set the device in front of the headmaster.

Ozpin watched the recorded duel in interest, observing the movements of one of the students who left him puzzled the most. He watched as she toyed with her opponent, before ending it quickly and mercilessly. Taking another sip from his mug, Ozpin pondered over the match he watched. It was one-sided - this was obvious. And he could say, with absolute certainty, that Artemis was not going at her best.

"She toyed with him." Ozpin started out, taking another sip of coffee.

"She did." Glynda agreed.

"She shows little effort and beat Cardin down like it was nothing." Ozpin pointed out again, Glynda nodding in affirmation.

"This goes beyond basic knowledge of fighting styles," Ozpin continued. "This is how a veteran would fight, composed. Analyzing her opponent's weaknesses. Such an ability is not picked up quickly. She didn't even give him a chance to react." Ozpin concluded, his mind travelling back to the first meeting between him and the Spartan. She had him analyzed in only a few seconds.

"It's an ability that's honed to a fine point, as such with any other skill," Glynda interjected through the silence. "Though she's still young."

Ozpin nodded, watching the duel again, in slow motion this time. Strike by strike, step by step, breath by breath Ozpin watched the duel. Each strike Artemis delivered was controlled, quick and powerful, exploiting her opponent's weakness, all the while cancelling Cardin's strengths in the same movement.

"She possesses the experience of a huntsman, and then a bit more. And something else…" Ozpin trailed off, deep in thought.

"Something else…?" Glynda questioned, looking towards the headmaster, confused. Ozpin dismissed the thought, placing it aside for later.

"I only hope that Ironwood does not catch wind of this. If he does… I do not believe she-" Ozpin gestured to Artemis "-will be willing to listen to another military leader."

"What shall we do then, for now at least" Glynda inquired. A shake of the head from the silver-haired man was her answer.

"Nothing. For now. I believe it will be beneficial if we do tell her later." Ozpin studied the ending of the match.

"About _it_ , Professor?" Glynda input.

Ozpin simply nodded, replaying the duel again, taking another sip of his coffee.

"Qrow must be here for it as well. We'll try and tell Artemis and James at the same time." Ozpin concluded. "And prevent the two from butting heads when they inevitably meet."

Glynda nodded, attention diverted back to the replaying duel.

* * *

 **~~~~~JNPRR Dorm~~~~~**

* * *

JNPRR had returned to their dorms, their missing notes in hand. Thankfully, it didn't take them very long to fill them in and catch themselves up. And at this point in time, everyone was doing their own thing. Team RWBY had joined them as well. Ruby, Nora, Yang and Jaune were playing games. Blake watched them as they played, while Weiss and Pyrrha read. Ren and Artemis were watching old recordings the Spartan possessed on her personal, hand-held computer. The volume was almost mute, but it was low enough that neither the Ninja or the Spartan needed it any louder.

Artemis had only been here for a few months, and there were things she still hadn't experienced for herself. The biggest unknown was the Grimm. In her former line of work, information was unreliable at best and was suited as a fallback and reference. She wanted to test them for herself. She'd encountered four types of Grimm and killed two of those types. And if Ren's descriptions of some were accurate, well a challenge is a challenge, no matter how small.

Homework was long done for the group of teens as they wasted away a few more hours of the night. Artemis smirked lightly, taking note of how her team leader was socializing with his friends and teammates again.

Maybe she wouldn't have to give him a good smack upside the head after all.

* * *

 **~~~~~Following Day~~~~~**

* * *

Morning came chirping back to Beacon only a handful of hours later. None of JNPRR had fallen asleep in their beds. Controllers were discarded on the floor, a couple of books were underneath the desk near the door, and the teens were scattered all around the floor. Nora had, somehow, fallen asleep half on her bed, half on the floor. Her orange hair was trapped beneath the novel she had been reading. Pyrrha had fallen asleep with her binder open in her lap and her head tilted forward so much that a kink in her neck was inevitable. Her hair created a sort of privacy curtain around her face, hiding it from view.

Jaune had, managed to get his head underneath his bed, with his right arm across his eyes. Ren had fallen asleep with an arm propped up on a knee, his head against his bicep. Artemis rested with her head against the wall, arms lax by her side with legs crossed and her tacpad balanced across her knees.

As one, three alarms went off in tandem. The only one to wake from the alarms was Nora, as per usual. The orange haired girl groaned and attempted to sit up, only to fall to the floor with a crash.

"Ow…" Nora hissed, ignoring the fact that she'd manage to make Jaune do the same thing, and thus wake up the rest of JNPRR from their slumber. Jaune developed a nice, broad red stripe across his forehead that began to quickly diminish after smacking his head on the foot of his bed.

As Jaune and Nora got themselves out of their positions, the other three members of JNPRR stretched and went about their morning routines. Artemis managed to claim the bathroom first. About ten minutes later, the Spartan exited the bathroom, her uniform jacket draped over one shoulder, her old clothes over her opposite arm, Nora posed the first question of the day.

"I know you gave him a beatdown yesterday but-"

"Nora." Ren ran a hand over his tired face.

"-are you going to break Cardin's legs today?" The hammer-wielding hyper member asked eagerly, ignoring her childhood friend's groaning.

Artemis let a ghost of a smirk grace her features as she dumped her old clothes into the laundry. "Maybe, if he picks on our leader."

Nora scoffed and nearly walked into Pyrrha as the Amazon made for the bathroom. "You snooze you lose, Nora." She teased, closing the door.

Ren and Jaune laughed as Nora threw a mini tantrum, sitting on the edge of her bed in a pout.

"Situational Awareness, Nora." Artemis 'tsk'ed', pulling the strap of her bag over her shoulder. With the maturity of a huntress-in-training, Nora stuck her tongue out at her teammate, eliciting another round of laughs from the two boys.

Around forty minutes later, JNPRR left their dorm and sped their way to the cafeteria. While the rest of her team talked - mostly Nora - the Spartan enjoyed the now familiar scenery that surrounded her. It was rare to enjoy such a sight for the Spartan, with her life consumed by intergalactic war. The mess hall was already packed when the five-person team entered the building. Breakfast was lively once JNPRR joined RWBY in their usual spot.

For now, the world was non-existent until class started as the group began exchanging stories.


	5. Chapter 4: Forever Fighting

_**Chapter 4**_

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own RWBY or Halo Reach. All rights go to Rooster Teeth(RWBY) and 343i / Bungie(Halo Reach)

* * *

The morning passed on with few incidents. Cardin didn't learn from the previous day and the spanking he received from JNPRR's Spartan and was back to bugging Jaune. Artemis ignored most of the insults and jabs that Cardin had sent towards her before class officially started after breakfast. Unfortunately for JNPRR and RWBY, they had their first two classes with CRDL and thus had to endure the constant annoyance that Cardin was.

Currently, JNPRR and RWBY sat in history - taught by Dr. Oobleck. He was quite adamant about being called Doctor and not Professor. Quiet snoring came from Jaune, and Artemis shared a glance with Blake. Dr. Oobleck, meanwhile, was zipping around the classroom seemingly at random while talking rapidly - as per the usual.

"Yes. Yes, prior to the Faunus Rights Revolution or more popularly known as the Faunus war -" Oobleck was at his desk now "Humankind was quite adamant about centralizing Faunus population in Menagerie." The professor continued, taking a sip of coffee. Oobleck was now in front of his desk.

'Thank you augmentations.' Artemis frowned at how quickly the man moved. Even a few months in, it was still off-putting. The hyperactive teacher moved as quick as the Spartan, if not quicker.

"Now! While this must feel like ancient history to many of you - it is imperative to remember that these events are relatively recent! Why the repercussions of the uprising can still be seen to this day." Oobleck continued, seemingly teleporting around at random, taking another sip of his drink.

"Now, have any among you been subjugated or discriminated because of your Faunus heritage?" Dr. Oobleck asked quickly. Velvet and a few other students raised their hands, Blake among them. "Dreadful! Simply, dreadful!" He exclaimed.

"Remember students - it is precisely this kind of ignorance that breeds violence." Artemis snorted quietly but wrote down the recent information provided. "Now, can any of you young scholars tell me what many theorists believe to be the turning point in the third year of the war?" Oobleck inquired again.

"Yes?" Oobleck pointed to Weiss.

"The battle at Fort Castle." The heiress replied.

"Precisely! And who can tell me the advantage the Faunus had over General Lagune's forces?"

"Hey…" Jaune groaned, interrupted from his nap thanks to a paper ball from Cardin. Oobleck was in front of him in an instant.

"Mr. Arc! Finally contributing to this class! This is excellent! What is the answer?" Jaune stuttered and hesitated momentarily. The class was dead silent, and it appeared as if everyone had their eyes on JNPRR's leader.

"Uhh… um… b-binoculars!" Jaune finally answered. The class erupted into laughter. Artemis sighed, shaking her head slowly.

"Very funny, Mr. Arc. Cardin! Perhaps you would care to share your thoughts on the subject?" Oobleck questioned, clearly unamused by Jaune's lack of attentiveness.

"Oh, here we go again…" Artemis sighed again, shaking her head.

"Yep," Blake responded, already glaring at Cardin. CRDL's leader didn't notice, delivering his answer. Damn airhead.

"Well… I know it's a lot easier to train an animal than a soldier." The smartass responded.

"You're not the most... open-minded of individuals, are you, Cardin?" Pyrrha questioned hotly.

"What?" He shot back, "You got a problem?"

"No," Pyrrha replied in stride, "I have the answer - It's night vision. Many Faunus are known to have near perfect sight in the dark."

Cardin growled, turning away. Artemis raised her chin as a sign of victory, returning her attention to the professor standing behind his desk.

"General Lagune was inexperienced and made the mistake of attacking the Faunus in their sleep." Blake supplied.

"His army was outmatched, and General Lagune was captured." Artemis finished expertly without skipping a beat.

"Perhaps if he paid attention in class, he wouldn't have been remembered as such a failure." Blake shot at Cardin smugly. Artemis smirked lightly as several 'ohhh's' echoed from the student body in the class. Cardin stood up with a growl and Artemis followed suit, daring the man to try anything. Neither party exchanged any words, but the Spartan was ready to knock him down a few pegs if he tried anything.

"Mr. Winchester, Ms. Rivera - please take your seats." The hyperactive professor expressed. Jaune snickered at Cardin as the two sat back down.

"You - Mr. Winchester - and Mr. Arc will both be seeing me after class for additional readings!" Oobleck took a drink again as Jaune pouted.

"Now! Moving on…" Oobleck continued.

The rest of the class progressed without any further interruptions - thankfully. Students started exiting the classroom as the bell rang. Grabbing their things, team JNPRR - minus Jaune - joined the others exiting the classroom.

"You guys go on ahead - I'll wait for Jaune." Pyrrha stopped.

"Just don't be late," Artemis advised with a flat stare. Nora snickered and Ren sighed.

"Don't worry - we'll be fine." Pyrrha shot back with a smile. Artemis nodded. The next class continued on - with no sign of Pyrrha or Jaune.

"They're late…" Artemis pointed out as she, Ren and Nora worked.

"Yea… it's unlike them t-" Ren responded, cutting his answer mid-sentence as the bell rang, signalling the end of the class and school day. The ninja sighed. The three returned to the dorms, settling on their respective beds, slaving away at their homework, exchanging answers every so often. The window was open, and faint voices echoed from the rooftop. Casting a quick glance upwards, Artemis continued working. The talking continued and Artemis gently eased her book closed.

The now 19-year-old Spartan scowled. "I'm going to go see what's up…"

Neither teammate responded as she exited the dorm, making her way up the staircase to the rooftop. The closer she became the clearer the voices. It was Pyrrha and Jaune.

"- it to Beacon! It speaks volumes of what you're capable of!"

"You're wrong…" Jaune sighed. Artemis peaked around the corner, spotting Pyrrha's red hair, and part of Jaune's blonde hair.

"I-I don't belong here," JNPRR's leader said sadly.

"That's a terrible thing to say! Of course, you do!" Pyrrha exclaimed.

"No! I don't!" Jaune replied hotly, sighing. "I… wasn't really accepted into Beacon…"

"What do you mean?" Pyrrha asked, confused.

"I mean I didn't go to combat school! I didn't pass any tests! I didn't earn my spot at this academy!" Jaune exclaimed sadly. "I lied. I got my hands on fake transcripts and lied." Jaune threw his hand out to his side, releasing his biggest secret.

"What?" The warrior questioned, "But why?"

"Because this is what I've always wanted to be. My father, my grandfather and his father before him were all warriors! They were all heroes. I wanted to be one too. I was just… never good enough…" He looked to the night sky.

"Then let me help you." Pyrrha tried, reaching for his arm.

"I don't want help!" Jaune shrugged her off. "I don't want to be the damsel in distress! I want to be a hero!" Jaune snapped, staring his teammate dead in the eye.

"Jaune. I-" Pyrrha started, but Jaune cut her off.

"I am tired of being the loveable idiot, stuck. In. The. Tree. While his friends fight for their lives! Don't you understand!?" He asked harshly. Artemis suppressed a wince, pulling back around the corner, her gaze jumping to the ceiling as her mind swirled.

"If I can't do this on my own… Then what good am I?" He asked, softer. "Just, leave me alone… Okay?" Jaune requested sadly.

"If… that's what you think is best." Pyrrha replied quietly. Footsteps rang out softly across the rooftop. Pyrrha appeared seconds later, walking by her teammate as if Artemis didn't even exist.

"Pyrrha…" Artemis spoke quietly. The redhead turned around, finally seeing her teammate and partner. Pyrrha looked exhausted and hurt.

"I guess… you…" She tried. Artemis nodded silently.

"Yeah, I did." She replied shortly, glancing to the doorway. There was no use sugar coating it. Pyrrha sighed.

"It's okay…" Pyrrha said, her own gaze on the wall behind her teammate. Artemis shook her head.

"Let's just… go back to the dorm - it's been a long day." Pyrrha suggested. Artemis nodded, walking silently beside her partner to their room.

* * *

 **~~~~~~The Following Day~~~~~**

* * *

"How come Jaune gets home so late?" Nora inquired, jumping on her bed.

"He's become rather scarce ever since he's been fraternizing with Cardin," Ren replied.

"That's weird… doesn't he know we have a field trip tomorrow? We need our rest." Nora stressed, twisting mid-air before landing flat on her back.

"Today was a challenging day regardless. Still… I'd be surprised if he didn't know…" Artemis interjected, her eyes locked on the novel in her hands.

"I'm sure our leader knows exactly what he's doing," Pyrrha remarked aggressively, staring at the curtains behind the window.

"He does. He's smarter than he seems." Artemis replied, locking her golden-blue gaze onto the back of her partner's head. Pyrrha seemed almost… robotic with her replies. From a Spartan, that said quite a bit.

"I guess so…" Nora said sadly.

"Lets just… go to bed. We can worry about Jaune in the morning." Pyrrha relented, returning to her bed.

Artemis watched the rest of her team settle into their own. As the room lights flickered off, Artemis flipped her TacPad on, using it as a light to continue reading. A few hours later, the Spartan bookmarked her page and set the book on the nightstand, her TacPad turned off and laid next to it. She gave her newly arrived team leader a nod hidden in the dark before laying flat in her bed to ceiling stare until morning.

The next day, their field trip would begin.

* * *

 **~~~~~Forest of Forever Fall~~~~~**

* * *

The forest was… interesting. Trees decorated with red leaves every which way you looked. Glynda led the group of students through the forest, explaining their task.

"Yes, students, the Forest of Forever Fall is indeed beautiful. But… We are not here to sightsee." The professor explained, "Professor Peaches asked all of you to collect samples from trees deep inside this forest. I'm here to make sure none of you die while doing so." She took a breath, turning to face the students.

"Each of you is to gather one jar's worth of red sap," Glynda instructed, holding up a jar. "However. This forest is full of creatures of Grimm. Be sure to stick with your teammates. We will rendezvous back here at 4 o'clock. Have fun!"

Artemis smirked in anticipation, nodding slightly. Nora and Ren walked ahead and the Spartan followed, keeping an eye on their surroundings as they separated from the rest of the students. Pyrrha quickly caught up to them, receiving a raised eyebrow from Artemis in a silent question. Pyrrha shook her head, shrugging it off. Artemis returned her gaze to the forest surroundings.

Everyone arrived at the selected location, setting up to collect their own jar of sap. Artemis picked a tree along the outer fringes of the area and started collecting sap into the provided jar. After a few minutes, Artemis finished and secured the lid to her jar with a light huff, joining her teammates.

"Nora, stop drinking all the sap!" Pyrrha exclaimed, exasperated. Nora merely giggled in reply, hyper from the high-sugar sap. A roar drew Artemis' attention and put her senses on high alert.

"Did you guys hear that?" The spartan questioned, her eyebrows furrowed. Ren nodded, but Pyrrha frowned, shaking her head. Nora was resting against a tree, finally exhausted from taking everyone else's sap.

"Hear what?" Pyrrha questioned. Artemis looked to her right, her hand hovering above her TacPad.

"That roar, I'm going to go check. Stay here." Artemis ordered, summoning her Spartan armour in a black veil. Ren and Pyrrha watched in awe as the veil disappeared, leaving their teammate in bulky, oddly shaped armour. Artemis pulled her shotgun off her back as her visor polarized.

"Be careful, don't be afraid to call for help." Ren offered. Instead of a verbal response, the spartan swiped two fingers across her faceplate and bolted into the trees. Ren and Pyrrha shared a look before shrugging.

"C'mon, we need to finish," Pyrrha commented, returning to her task. Ren nodded in agreement.

Artemis was a blur of scorched purple as she moved through the trees, with her head on a constant swivel, sparing quick glances to her motion tracker every so often. A second roar captured her attention and the shotgun in her hands snapped up. The bushes in front of her rustled, giving way to a giant, black wolf. A white boned faceplate sat on its head like a helmet, with red markings decorating it. It's beady red eyes glowed full of anger and hatred. It roared at the spartan. Artemis merely glared beneath her black visor hotly. Subtly, she loaded the sixth shell into the shotgun, raising the barrel across her chest. Yanking the pump, the shotgun's mechanism rammed a shell into the waiting chamber.

The Beowulf Alpha roared again, charging towards the Spartan. Calmly, she aimed the shotgun, swiftly pulling the trigger. The eight gauge round separated, impacting the Grimm with multiple pellets. It continued on its path, forcing the spartan to move or take the impact.

Picking the latter, Artemis ducked her right shoulder, letting the Alpha Beowulf's claws bounce of her shields. She raised her body and with the bulk of the Grimm on her back, tossed it a few feet away from her, dazed. Artemis walked forward leisurely, ejecting the empty 8 gauge shell to load a fresh one into the chamber. She planted her foot on the beast's throat and fired the weapon with one hand. The head was blown to bits by the sheer power of the eight-gauge shell from less than a foot. Stepping off the dissolving corpse, Artemis ejected the spent casing, before loading two fresh ones in. Her motion tracker lit up again, with multiple contacts.

Beowolves filtered through the bushes around her, forming a small circle around the Hyper-Lethal. They numbered in the double digits - sixteen. That was just about two packs, but the Alphas were worryingly absent.

Artemis smiled beneath her helmet despite this fact, recalling a move that she'd seen an ally use in situations like this with a shotgun. She had six rounds to make count in this fight. She had her knives and her swords as secondaries. Artemis settled with the shotgun raised across her chest, waiting for the first move.

Eventually, the first Grimm moved and Artemis spun, firing her shotgun through the neck of the Grimm. She let the dissolving corpse sail past her into another charging Beowulf. Though her speed was unmatched, Artemis' combination of moves was unrefined as she used this particular move set for the first time. She downed another two with another pair of shells in rapid succession. The shotgun recoil was vital with each pull of the trigger as some Beowolves caught it's stock to the face before eating the sole of Artemis' boot on the follow through. Artemis swung the shotgun around into the face of a fourth Beowolf. It clamped its jaws around the barrel of the weapon.

More of its fellows charged the Spartan as this happened. With the wolf still clamped onto the shotgun and scratching at her depleting shields, Artemis dodged the first few before being forced up against a tree. The Beowulf snapped its head back in an effort to rid the Spartan of her shotgun, but she wasn't having any of it. With her right hand securely around the handle, she depressed the trigger and killed the fourth in a fountain of black dissolving fur, white bone-plate and tissue.

With her limited movement, Artemis dropped the shotgun to the ground and began forcing Grimm away from her. The armour's shield warning blared in her ears and her HUD flashed red. She snapped her armoured head forward, the chin of her helmet meeting the mask of the Beowulf in her face. It howled in response and let the Spartan free as it stumbled back, dazed.

In the blink of an eye, Artemis impaled it through an eye with a knife, before drawing her energy-sword lookalikes from the magnets on her thighs. The blades let out a 'shink' as they locked into place at their full four-foot length.

Even with all the gruelling training, and constant practice with firearms, Artemis was even more proficient with blades, arguably the most skilled and proficient of all Spartans to have ever lived in the twenty-sixth century. Unlike the moves she performed with the shotgun, each move blended perfectly into the next, with no wasted movement.

The first move was a lightning fast slash through a pair of Beowulf's necks. Then the blades were buried through the chests of two more, bringing their number down to five. She moved with the grace of a gazelle, coupled with the ferocity and speed of a cheetah.

An interesting combo to be sure, but the Spartan mentally shook off the wayward thought and decapitated the remaining five with a single three-sixty spin. As the corpses dropped, Artemis reclamped her sword to her thighs and retrieved her knife and shotgun.

Thundering footsteps reached Artemis and she turned, barely being able to brace herself against an impact that sent the half-ton spartan sailing through several trees and near a small clearing with a cliff edge. Propping herself to a knee, Artemis narrowly dodged a claw from a Beowulf.

"So you finally show, huh?" Artemis scoffed, executing a low spin and removing the Grimm's feet from below it.

She sprung back as a second Grimm came in, attempting to decapitate the Spartan as a golden sheen washed over her armour, signalling the recharge of her shields. She raised her fists, loosely clenched, in front of her and started boxing the two Alphas. Despite the height being relatively similar between the three combatants, the alpha's with their gang-attacks couldn't touch the agile spartan. By contrast, Artemis was able to land hits where and when she wanted too with her unmatched speed.

Whispers reached the receptors of her helmet, and the Hyper-Lethal vaguely noted that she'd wandered into the clearing while occupied with the two Alphas. Artemis countered a pair of claws that popped her shields, leaving gashes in the forearm plating. Artemis scowled, ignoring the alarms and warning that appeared on her heads-up display. The Alphas began alternating their attacks and executing them from various angles, making it a challenge to block or dodge, while attempting to remain on the offensive. Generic Grimm may not be very smart, but Grimm like Beowulf Alphas and Ursa Majors?

Definitely smart.

Artemis peeled her helmet off and tossed it to the side during a brief respite. Her purple-stained blonde hair dropped around her neck. Several gasps came from the students who were there and didn't know who the Spartan was.

Which was almost everyone present, bar her teammates.

A thin haze of black filled the clearing inside the forest from the dissolving corpse of the Ursa Major. Sparks jumped from the cracked visor and Artemis' scowl deepened. She was going to need new armour now. At the very least a helmet.

Artemis charged the Alpha's, knives in hand. She ducked under the razor-sharp claws of the first alpha, hamstringing it and sending it crashing to the ground. She bounced the second Alpha's attack off her shoulder pauldron. She raked her blades over the forearms of the second before delivering a powerful high kick to its face. The bone-armour and skull caved in, and the alpha began dissolving before it even hit the forest floor. She turned back to the survivor, rolling over it's back as it turned to impale her with its claws. In return, Artemis drove her twin knives into the back of the Beowulf Alpha. The beast stiffened before it began dissolving.

With a swift pull, the Lone Wolf withdrew her knives and let the corpse fall to the ground. The Grimm was gone before it came to a full rest on the forest floor. In a flourish of movement, Artemis had her weapons sheathed and her ruined helmet in her hands.

She barely spared a glance up at the crowd ahead of her. "What?"

"Y-you just…" Ruby faltered. Artemis nodded without so much as a flicker in the mask of neutrality on her face. RWBY and JNPRR gathered closer around the Spartan, with team RWBY sporting questioning looks on their faces.

"Don't we have an assignment to finish?" Artemis broke the silence once more, gently pushing her way through the small crowd.

"Oh… I still need my jar!" Ruby shrieked, running off in a flurry of rose petals. The rest of her team followed quickly as well.

Despite the situation, each of the five members of JNPRR cracked a small smile to each other. Ren brought out the shoulder bag he'd brought with him and produced three jars, while Pyrrha pulled out the other two stuck to the back of her shield. She offered Artemis her jar, to which the blonde took with a bow of her head.

"Guys, umm…" Jaune faltered. Artemis gave his shoulder a gentle pat.

"We're a team, we look out for each other." Artemis gave him a rare smile. Jaune shot her back an awkward smile. Nora threw his arm over his shoulder.

"We need to get back!" She laughed, removing her arm and spinning in circles ahead of them.

"Don't mind her. She's had at least three jars of sap." Pyrrha snarked with a teasing grin.

"She is right, though. We need to be back in about ten minutes." Ren checked his scroll, pointedly ignoring the lower aura levels of Jaune and Artemis.

They began walking back towards the rendezvous points, chatting animatedly. Though not religious in any type of way, Artemis thanked whatever deity was out there that she'd told her team who she was. She scowled, preferring to ignore the potential storm of questions that could have come her way as they began appearing one by one in her mind.

It was smooth sailing back to Beacon once JNPRR returned to the rendezvous point and boarded the Bullhead.

* * *

The remainder of the day went by without a hitch as Ren, Artemis and Pyrrha dragged their other two teammates to get their missed work for the day.

Well, more like Artemis carried the two on her shoulders, while the other two laughed.

As Remnant's sun dipped below the horizon at the end of another day, team JNPRR lazed about their dorm. Nora played video games, as per usual, and had roped Ren into it as well. The two warriors on opposite ends of the same bed, compared notes for the exams that would befall them less than a couple months.

"Player 1: Victory!"

Nora's laugh echoed through the dorm once more as she beat her partner once more in their game. Ren just sighed and shook his head and endured yet another match against the hyper pinkette. Pyrrha had claimed one of Artemis' legs as a pillow as she read a book on the Spartan's bed. The Spartan, by contrast, was drawing, redesigning her armour. She was going to have to find another source of materials or sacrifice parts of her arsenal to make armour even close to her old set.

...Or maybe she wouldn't.

Activating her Tactical Computer, Artemis dove deep into the wealth of classified material she'd managed to escape ONI with. And so, with the quietest ruffling of pages, the one side of the dorm fell to silence once more.

Jaune was, unsurprisingly, absent from the dorm. As time continued passed, and Ren and Nora kept playing, Pyrrha roused Artemis from her careful sketching and calculations. Once the Spartan's unnatural eyes looked down, Pyrrha pointed up to the roof. Artemis glanced up before nodding. Pyrrha bookmarked her novel, and the Spartan closed and put her project inside the lone drawer of their shared nightstand.

The two partners quietly made their way out of their dorm, their footfalls muffled by the carpet of the hallway and carpeted stairs. The roof exit door was ajar, allowing the cold night air to filter into the stairwell. Neither warrior paid it any attention, exiting onto the concrete roof.

"No Cardin tonight?" She asked as the stepped out of the door. "I thought you two were best buds."

"Pyrrha, I'm sorry" Jaune apologized, bowing his head slightly. "You were only trying to be nice and… I had all this stupid macho stuff in my head a - "

"Jaune" the redhead interrupted. "It's okay. Your team really misses their leader, you know."

"That -" Artemis interjected, "Would be an understatement."

"You should come down. Ren made pancakes" Pyrrha sang. "No syrup though - you can thank Nora for that."

"If she hasn't eaten them all already…" Artemis joked lightly, following Pyrrha to the roof door. Jaune turned his head away in thought.

"Wait!" He said in slight desperation. The two girls turned back to him. "I know that… I don't deserve it after all that has happened, but… would you still be willing… to help me?" He asked nervously. "To help me become a better fighter."

Pyrrha turned around, sharing a look with the blonde haired super soldier next to her. Artemis nodded in agreement. Pyrrha smiled in return, before walking up to him, giving him a shove to the ground.

"Hey!" Jaune exclaimed.

"Your stance is all wrong. You need to be wider, and lower to the ground." Pyrrha instructed, pulling Jaune to his feet. Artemis crossed her arms and released a huff of amusement.

"Let's try that again." The Spartan stated.


	6. Chapter 5: The Leak

_**Chapter 5**_

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own RWBY or Halo Reach. All rights go to Rooster Teeth(RWBY) and 343i / Bungie(Halo Reach)

* * *

The next month and a half were spent preparing for semester-end exams and the highly anticipated Vytal Festival. Jaune - slowly, but surely - improved, and became more confident in his own skills - both in class and in combat. Under the tutelage of two of Beacon's best combatants, Jaune began to learn how to read a battle. Pyrrha gave him single opponent teachings, while Artemis focused on bigger engagements with multiple opponents. Say what you will about Jaune, be he could listen well when he chose, though training with a Spartan and an Amazon-like warrior didn't give him much choice to not pay attention.

The two warriors trained their partner every second night, and never making the new night the same. Artemis explained to her team, in the simplest of terms, what she was. It didn't change their opinion of the supersoldier, of which Artemis was silently grateful.

She also slaved away at repairing and updating further components of her armour during this time as well, altering its settings. The armour's purple was replaced with the darker maroon and the white with black. Not to mention the other functions she managed to include Artemis looked over the blueprints in her wrist-mounted tactical computer, before closing it with a satisfied nod. She flicked her eyes to Ruby, who was bouncing in place and gave the younger girl a smile. The weapon nut giggled quietly, before rolling her eyes as Weiss pulled her back to their studying.

Artemis retrieved her own notebook, flipped to a random page and leaned back against the wall behind her. The JNPRR dorm was occupied by team RWBY as both teams mingled with each other while reviewing for the exams that would take place in almost two weeks time. As the hours passed, tired students fell asleep, scattered around the JNPRR dorm.

It was probably a good thing tomorrow was Saturday.

* * *

 _ **~~~~~11 days later~~~~~**_

* * *

Artemis stood in a doorway leading to one of Beacon's many balconies. Her exams had been finished, leaving the Spartan with plenty of time on her hands. The gentle breeze licked any exposed skin and ruffled her unbuttoned uniform jacket. She could hear the chirping of birds in the trees on academy grounds, and the occasional wisp of a Grimm's roar in the far distance. Remnant's sun glinted behind a thick layer of clouds, making the sky a mild grey. She took a few steps more and leaned on the railing that overlooked one of Beacon's many greenery spaces leading to the surrounding forest. It was a nice moment of peace for the Spartan, as she was rarely able to get away from her team. It gave her a moment to dwell on her final, hostile confrontation on Reach, something she'd not thought of in months.

But it left her more questions than answers. How did that Field Marshal know her? Everything and anything she did leading to her deployment of the ultimately doomed bastion was classified at some of ONI's highest levels. Could the Covenant have recovered the information? Artemis didn't dismiss the possibility fully, but the way the Marshal talked was as if it knew her.

Personally.

The Spartan shook her head slightly. It wasn't logical. No Covenant liked humans and humans hated the Covenant in turn. Her biological family was nothing more than dust and echoes, with some burned to glass. She'd never seen her father or siblings and had learned their names second hand from her mother. She had no idea where they were and her mother and grandparents killed. The latter had been glassed to ashes.

Her blonde hair whipped in the wind as she took a breath and blinked, bringing her mind back into focus. Heels clicked behind her and snow-white hair entered her vision seconds later, stepping around the corner of the doorframe to lean against the wall.

"Weiss." The Spartan greeted tersely.

"Artemis." Weiss nodded in return. Silence enveloped the pair and Weiss shuffled from foot to foot a few times before speaking again. "How'd your exams go?"

"Alright, I think." Artemis tilted her head and shrugged as she replied. "You?"

"Probably could have done better. Not that it'd matter." The heiress crossed her arms and sighed.

Artemis glanced up at the younger girl, an eyebrow raised slightly. "Family?"

Weiss' timid nod was all the answer the Spartan needed. Her mind immediately wracked up the obvious reasons into a list in her mind. High Expectations? Highly Critical? Snobs? Arrogant? All of the above?

Artemis snorted in her head.

"Screw 'em." The Spartan said.

"What?" Caught off-guard, Weiss' reply was a little louder than she wanted. Artemis snorted aloud this time.

"Not literally, of course. Just ignore the expectations of the idiots. Only take those you truly trust seriously. I know I did. Everything else was just noise."

"Just noise?"

Artemis nodded. "I can vaguely remember ignoring everyone when I was a kid. Except for my parents and grandparents. I didn't trust anyone else. It's not the best of habits, and one I'm trying to break."

"How do you know who to trust?"

"How would you?" Artemis countered immediately.

Weiss sighed but spoke anyway. "I wouldn't really. It was rare for me to be allowed to leave manor grounds except for performances as a child."

"Then trust in your instincts. And those you feel truly deserve your trust." Artemis raised to her full height and pushed clear of the railing. She gave Weiss a solitary shoulder pat. "It would help to remember the happy memories, but learn from some of the bad ones."

"Are you trying to patronize me?" The white-haired teen asked briskly, glaring up at Artemis. The super soldier gave a 'hmph' and smirked lightly.

"Just some advice. Patronizing you wasn't my goal." Artemis started around the door.

"If you had a choice, would you choose to become who you are again?" Weiss asked, turning to the spartan.

Artemis stopped but didn't turn around. " I remember loving my family. But I would, someone else might've gotten it wrong."

With that, Artemis disappeared through the doorway and out of sight, leaving the Heiress to think over their brief conversation. The faint calling of her name brought her attention to her partner. Ruby was standing in the midst of the hallway, a grin on her face and waving her hand high in the air. Weiss smiled faintly.

Maybe Artemis had a point.

* * *

The elevator ride to Ozpin's office felt like hours to the Spartan, but in reality, was no more than a minute. The horrible music didn't help matters either. She checked the timer on her tactical computer. Six hours. With a satisfied smile, Artemis returned it to the pocket of her school uniform. The elevator dinged, and the Spartan's face returned to neutrality in a flash. The polished steel doors opened, revealing three figures. She recognized Glynda, who appeared annoyed. Her riding crop was resting against her shoulder. Ozpin was taking a drink of coffee, a small smile playing on his lips.

The third figure was unknown to Artemis, but she could read his irritated posture like an open book. The stranger's voice was deep and distinctly male.

"-and yet you want me - a fully trained huntsman to take a huntress-in-training on a mission? Oz, why? Besides, you said we weren't going to show this to anyone."

"I already explained it. All the other huntsmen are busy. You will find that she knows her way around a battle pretty well. And this may very well concern her." Ozpin informed with an irritated breath. Glynda gave the Spartan a nod as she approached quietly behind the stranger.

"I think I'll judge that myself, Oz." The man grumbled, taking a swig from, what Artemis assumed, was a cup.

"She's here, Headmaster." Ozpin turned his attention to the newcomer, the stranger doing the same. Artemis studied him, as the huntsman opposite her studied her up and down. Did she need to mention she was more than half a foot taller than the man?

The man had a brown flask, not a cup, in his right hand and it's cap in his left. The man wore black pants and shoes, with a shredded red cloak, darker in colour than the one Ruby used. His weapon - a broad longsword - sat on his lower back. Gears and a small lever replaced the crossguard a regular sword would possess. His light gray shirt had a long tail on it. The man himself had a pale white complexion with spiked hair and spiky hair that fell above his dull red eyes, with an angled cross on a string around his neck. He released a huff and rolled his eyes, unimpressed.

Artemis mentally waved off the man's action and stepped around, facing Ozpin. "You called for me, Headmaster?"

Ozpin smiled lightly, "I did. Artemis, meet Qrow; A veteran huntsman. Highly experienced and a trusted ally."

"I know of him." She tilted her head towards Qrow, "Ruby holds you in high regard."

"And who are you?" Qrow asked in turn. Artemis responded with robot-like precision.

"Sierra-312, Noble Six."

"That ain't a name." Qrow took another drink.

"We have more important matters to discuss than names." Ozpin interrupted before Artemis could argue. He continued, pulling up a digital report. "Thirteen days ago, the Headmaster of Shade Academy reported a potential meteor strike in the deserts surrounding the Kingdom of Vacuo."

"Seven days ago, Oz sent me to investigate the power spike that had suddenly started occurring a few kilometres away from the impact zones. I recovered this." Qrow pulled a big knife from the waist pocket of his tailcoat.

"Wha-Hey! Careful with that."

Artemis didn't listen and instead turned the large weapon in her two hands. In her hands, it was natural, but at the same time, it wasn't. She engaged in a thirty-second staring contest with the bottom of the handle.

"Where exactly was this found?" She asked, setting the knife onto the Headmaster's desk.

"That's precisely why we called you, Miss Rivera." Ozpin spoke, "We were hoping you would be able to shed some light on these images."

Ozpin clicked a few keys, and images projected themselves on a 3D screen. Two of them showed separate angles of a twin-building facility. Both buildings towered up to about three stories in height, with numerous small windows on both buildings. They looked identical. Barbed wire fencing surrounded the facility, and a single road approached from the right/left of each image. There were at least six watchtowers visible through both, though they appeared unmanned in each image. As well as an odd rectangular object. Neither picture showed it very well.

"Moderately defended, with at least a company of troops. I'd estimate around eighty." Artemis spoke after a couple of moments. "I can't speak for any air defence or indirect fire weapons. Exterior patrols are a possibility. What do you want, exactly, Headmaster?"

"Information. I'd like to know who's running the facility, and if at all possible, the nature of that meteor strike." He answered in reply. The images turned into a rough 3D layout as Ozpin stepped around his desk, his back to the crystal clear glass.

"So… a silent operation." Artemis looked at the 3D image once more. "I'm going to hazard a guess that there's a sealed level below ground as well. Maybe a tunnel network. Is it close to cliffs?"

"The nearest cliff leads down hundred-and-forty-feet into a river. But it's six kilometres away." Qrow replied, shaking his head. "A tunnel network isn't good without back exits."

"When do you want us to leave?" Artemis watched Ozpin move around in her peripheral.

"As soon as possible. Leaving within the next couple of hours puts you in Vacuo sometime before nightfall." The headmaster sipped his coffee between words.

"Do try to be quick, Miss Rivera. Giving homework that is unnecessary isn't an enjoyable task." Goodwitch said. Artemis nodded before turning to Qrow.

"I'll be at the landing pad in about twenty minutes."

"See you there."

True to her word, Artemis was there not twenty minutes later, swerving around the occasional person, all the while her head was down. Staring at her tactical computer. Artemis strode right passed Qrow, pocketing the tacpad.

"I guess we're going then." The huntsman crawled into the bullhead and smacked the wall to the cockpit.

Moments later, the craft was airborne and headed south-west towards Vacuo. The armour-less Spartan kept her head down, her hands clasped between her legs.

"Ozpin said you have high-tech armour." Qrow started. All it did was get the glance of the Spartan's golden blue eyes.

"I do."

"Where is it?"

The spartan tapped her thigh, where she placed her tacpad. Qrow raised an eyebrow but accepted the answer regardless. He could see three knives on Artemis' person. The giant one in her boot, and the two hidden under her sleeves near her wrists. His instinct told him she had more weapons on her person that he couldn't see.

"Calm down, Branwen." Artemis spoke, "You're coiled like a loaded spring. That's detrimental on an infiltration mission."

With that, Artemis sat back, closed her eyes and began falling into a powernap. The trip would take almost three hours anyway.

* * *

 _ **~~~~~Crater, Outskirts of Vacuo, 1746 hours~~~~~**_

* * *

"Hey, kid. Wake up." Qrow gave Artemis a rough shake- "Whoa!"

-and almost lost his finger for it. "Don't wake me like that again." She scowled.

"Yeah well, we're here. The edge of the crater." Qrow straightened himself, "Wait for us, would you?"

The pilot nodded. Qrow hopped off the bullhead and Artemis poked her head into the cockpit.

"Don't wait for us here. Go to Shade and wait there."

The pilot hesitated, before nodding. The bullhead began ascending as Artemis stepped into the scorching desert sand. The evening sun was just beginning to set on Vacuo, turning the desert into an orange-red. Qrow gave the spartan a quizzical look, that she pointedly ignored.

"This is the crater?" She asked. The crater was like glass, the sand superheated and cooled into the fragile material. Qrow gave her a deadpan look.

Artemis scanned the interior of the crater. "It's a good thing this is sand and not hard dirt."

"Why?"

"Otherwise I'd have no idea what landed here. But now I do." Artemis replied. "I'd guess more than a hundred tons. A good thing it was here, in the desert."

She swiped her hand through the loose sand and hit more of the glass-like substance. "A sandstorm passed through here during the impact. I can see more scorching that way."

Qrow followed her finger south, noting the marks as well. "What do you think it was."

"I have a few ideas." Artemis slid down into the crater and walked to its epicentre. Qrow joined her a couple of minutes later.

The spartan was bent over a piece of metal with a bunch of scorched information onto it. It wasn't very small, probably about six inches wide, and about three times that in length.

"The serial identification of a Standard UNSC D77-TC Pelican." Artemis answered, "Sierra…. Alpha… Victor… Niner, Niner, Four, Eight, One, One, Mike, Alpha, Delta, Oscar, Lima, Five, Two, Five, Four, Niner…." Artemis trailed off at the end. "No…."

"What?" Qrow asked as Artemis cleared some more sand from the surface, as well as some bit of the scorching after the piece had been sandblasted nearly two weeks ago.

"This was… nevermind that," Artemis shook her head. "The launch date is here, as well as the home facility..."

Without another word, Artemis bolted up the far side of the crater, the plate of armour still in her hand. "How could I have missed it… it was in those images… these scorch marks aren't the Pelican or the fire… it's not even scorching at all… it's drag marks!"

"By your reaction, whoever did that shouldn't have been able to move it." Qrow guessed. Artemis nodded gruffly and Qrow continued.

"I can also assume that whoever did this would need heavy-duty lift gear or the like to move this. I mean, that crater is fairly deep."

"The pelican was buried, nose first on the eastern side. It's hard to see, but there's a visible indent filled with sand. An impact, for a crater this size, this deep… the pelican had to be moving at around six to seven hundred kilometres per hour on impact. Thirty degrees."

"So nothing should survive?"

"No. Nothing short of a Spartan under… armour lock…" Artemis tensed. "Where's the facility?" She asked. Qrow pointed south. "Then let's go."

Qrow nodded and started off, Artemis always a step behind him. It took about three hours of traversing the sand dunes and various cracks in the desert to arrive at the facility. By this point, the sun was well below the horizon, with only a few rays of sun left to tickle the night sky. They set up on a taller dune, roughly a hundred meters from the facility and peaked the ridge.

"Time?" Qrow asked.

"21:39" Artemis glanced at Qrow, seeing his question glance, "9:39 pm, Branwen. Use your scroll next time."

Qrow rolled his eyes and pointed at the entrance. A truck was coming down the road. It arrived at the security checkpoint "Supply truck, I believe."

"I count fifteen hostiles presently. Six in the towers. Two at each of the two checkpoint gates. I've got the other six at doors." The Lone wolf pointed to the far side of the compound. "Did you see a back door the first time?"

"No… just interior gates to get into the outer pathway that lines the base," Qrow replied quietly. Artemis grabbed an extra video-capable earpiece and handed it to Qrow, who stuffed it in his ear, and flicked it on. Artemis kept the channel closed for them, however. They wouldn't need it yet.

"If we need it, I can do ariel reconnaissance."

"If you can fly," came the sarcastic reply from the Spartan. A sound of ruffling feathers came from her right and she tilted her head, staring at a crow with blood-red eyes.

It cawed at her.

She swatted it. The bird flew off towards the facility, disappearing into the darkening night sky. The tacpad buzzed against her thigh and the spartan grabbed it absently. She glanced down at it, satisfied that the tower snipers wouldn't see the dim light. Her armour was ready, as was its gimmicks. She pushed down the slope a few feet and came to her full height and activated the armour. She'd forgone the purple in favour of the darker maroon, with black on everything else and a silver visor. The Spartan pulled out two more objects; a sniper and a silencer. Twisting the object onto the end of the high-powered rifle and pocketing the muzzle brake, Artemis peaked the ridge again lining up the first of the six snipers in the tower. She opened the comm channel.

"Qrow?"

" _I'm in._ " Came the response, " _You can pop those snipers now. I'm going to do a bit of sneaking around. See if I can find anything important._ "

" _Roger. Six out._ " Artemis switched her comm off, leaving it as a notification for the multitude of armour AI's to manage.

She raised the scope a quarter of an inch above her target's head. Her finger squeezed the trigger. The round broke free of the silencer without anything more than a cough and ripping it's target's life from them, blowing apart the entire neck, effectively beheading the target. She repeated the same thing three more times before Qrow pinged her again.

She opened the channel. Qrow didn't say anything, but she could vaguely hear his breathing as if he was in a vent. Other voices began filtering through the mic as Qrow messed with a couple of the settings.

Artemis downed the fifth sniper and began lining the last shot before the voices began to get through. Deciding to listen, she flicked the safety of the weapon on and removed her hand from the trigger, resting it on the sand dunes.

" _... the boss just arrived back on base._ " Male.

" _Yeah, probably back for whatever data was leftover. Maybe for that giant ship in the courtyard._ " Another male.

" _I doubt it. We needed four trains worth of power to move it. Not to mention freight bullheads. He has to take it to Atlas. Atlas isn't exactly close._ " First male again.

" _I know. I really want that thing out of here. It's what's stopping us from getting paid._ "

" _A good thing we charge by the hour._ " The two Mercenaries chuckled.

A piercing screech echoed through the channel and Artemis turned the volume down until it stopped. Qrow's breathing was absent once she resumed normal volumes and the now-identified mercenaries voices came through again.

" _God… what the Fuck was that?!_ "

" _None of the computers are on._ " The first spoke again.

" _Show's over asshole! If your here, show yourself and you won't get shot…_ "

" _You dumbass, now they won't come out… besides the boss is nearly here. I can hear the footsteps._ "

A door creaked open, and Artemis could hear Qrow shuffle back an inch. Maybe more.

" _Is something amiss?_ " A female voice filtered into the communications channel.

" _No, sir._ " The mercs denied in tandem.

" _Then you two are dismissed._ " The sound of the mercenaries leaving the room was accented by the closing of the door. " _Now, about what we discovered-_ "

" _As I've already said on the way here, we need absolutely everything. The word from the top boss is that there's someone totting technology similar to what we recovered two weeks ago._ " The voice was male this time.

" _Where?_ "

" _Vale. Likely Beacon Academy,_ " The man replied, " _This is a security camera image from about seven months ago when Mr. Torchwick acquired the generous amount of dust from Dust 'til Dawn for us._ "

" _Then I have the perfect person to hunt them down for you,_ " An intercom click could be heard. " _Send me Andrew._ "

The reply was muffled, but the intercom clicked off regardless a moment later. Artemis was stuck in place, as still as a statue. She peered back into the scope, only to lose sight of the sixth sniper as they disappeared from view.

"Qrow." Artemis hissed, "You need to get out of there… that man-"

" _No, I want to know who this Andrew is._ " Came the sharp, but quiet reply.

"He's li-" Qrow interrupted her again.

" _He's here. Quiet._ " Sure enough, the door opened and the sound of cloth snapping into, what Artemis could only guess was a salute filtered through quietly.

" _Andrew, this is Dr. Malcolm Bell. He's going to point you to your target. Dr. Bell, this is Andrew, Codename Hound. One of our best trackers._ " A moment of silence before a chuckle echoed.

" _Brilliant. When do we leave?_ " Andrew asked. The voice was muffled by a helmet.

" _Now._ " The female voice replied. The door opened again and three sets of footsteps began leaving, " _I'll show you out, Doctor Bell._ "

Before Artemis could say anything else, Qrow clicked his mic off, and the Hyper Lethal began changing her loadout, grabbing her Magnum, as well as the M739 Squad Assault Weapon, as well as light explosives. She crested the hill and approached the base.

A pair of lights signified the start of the doctor's car and it tore away from the base at its best possible speed. Artemis was out of range anyway. Approaching the checkpoint was an interesting task. It had 230-degree swivelling security cameras on each post. She threw a knife, which embedded itself in the mercenary across the road, and silenced the second one with a slash to the throat. She repeated the process with the other two guards at the second checkpoint.

Hiding the bodies took a while longer, putting the four corpses out in the desert. She activated the first gimmick of her armour, and a sheen washed over it, changing the entire armour a jet black, including the visor. She snuck past several guards and dropped a couple more as she entered the brightly lit base She tracked Qrow's comm, eventually arriving at what appeared to be an armoury.

"What did you find?" She questioned, decloaking behind him. Qrow spun, his hand grasping Harbinger at his side. He relaxed, upon recognizing the spartan after she depolarized her visor.

"This. I can only assume it was part of what they were talking about." He holds up a scorched and ash-covered camera.

Artemis eases it from the battered piece of equipment from Qrow's hands and gives it a few turns before passing it back to him with a stern gaze. "Hold onto that. Do not, under any circumstances, let it go."

Qrow nodded, putting the device and its comparatively small data card in a protective satchel. "Think we should raid their computers?"

Artemis smirked, "Got a spare scroll?"

Qrow copied her smirk and pulled out a second scroll. Qrow handed it to her, replaced Harbinger on his lower back and turned back into a crow. The spartan polarized her visor, recloaked and snuck over to the control room, dodging mercenaries along the way. It swished open, and the lone occupant turned their head, only to be met with the razor-sharp edge of Emile's Kukri burying itself in their head. Without missing a beat, Artemis swept up the knife, flicked it clean and sheath it once more.

"Alright…" She tilted her head to Qrow, who was perched on her shoulder, "...shit. The second we start this, they'll know we're here. And I can't have you using that sword of yours in a gunfight."

Artemis turned to the heavy metal table off to the side of the room and picked it up with little difficulty, setting it on its side, feet from the door, giving them viable cover. Qrow turned back to human, taking the assault rifle, and ammo, that she had passed him.

"Few things first: Mag, mag release. Bolt. Safety. Ammunition counter." She pointed to all of the aforementioned items on the MA5C she passed Qrow. He nodded, loaded the weapon and kept himself behind a console opposite of Artemis on the right.

Setting up in cover, Artemis grabbed the scroll and hit the button. Almost immediately, alarms started blaring through the facility and automated voices spoke through the commotion.

" _Alert: Intruders in the Control room. Alert: Unauthorized download commenced, data stream disrupted. Immediate data purge recommended to offsite facilities._ " The alarm repeated.

"Three minutes!" Artemis yelled to Qrow over the alarm. The huntsman nodded and the control room door opened, showing two troops, both of which Artemis dropped with the SAW.

Artemis took a breath and checked the scroll. It was complete. It probably had been for a little while. A pile of bodies filled the doorway, and the hallway immediately in front of the door. Lots of the electronics in the control room had been fried, shot up or blown up.

She tossed the scroll to Qrow, who slid the magazines and weapon back, all of which disappeared a couple of seconds later. Qrow pocketed the scroll and followed behind Artemis as they worked out of the cramped room and into the bloody hallway.

"I severely underestimated their strength." Artemis' armoured head bobbed from side to side.

"How badly?"

"By about twenty or so. The rest are waiting outside the door at the end of the hall, as well as snipers in the tower across from the door. I'm counting fourteen, including the two in the tower."

The pair stopped ten feet from the door, coming to a 'T' intersection. Artemis looked to Qrow.

"Make sure that you get back safe. I'll meet you back at Shade."

Qrow nodded and darted right. She turned down the hall towards the courtyard, her boots cracking the dirty white tiled floor with each thunderous step. She raised her tac-pad, grabbed her energy sword look-alikes and extended the blades to their full four-foot length in one smooth motion, charging through the thin metal door separating her and the courtyard.

"Fire!"

Immediately met with a hail of weapons fire that pinged off her shields, Artemis got to work, cutting down every enemy that dared be in the way of the Spartan's murderous rampage. Darting from target to target, the space-rating Titanium-A composed weapons cut through body armour, flesh and bone with sickeningly efficient results. With slashes, stabs and throws, Artemis ended nine enemies around the Pelican in less than fifteen seconds.

The spartan's weapons slashed through the rifle of the last enemy, who got pinned to the side of the pelican beneath Artemis' Mjolnir-covered hand.

"Where is he?" The Spartan snarled to the struggling mercenary.

"I… don't know who… you're talking about." The merc coughed out.

"Your boss." The merc's head moved slightly backwards, glaring at the spartan with hateful blue eyes.

"I… I ain't telling you… shit!" He rasped. Artemis' hand drifted up to her right shoulder and curled around the knife. It slid silently from its holster.

"You'd better." She deliberately raised it into view and pressed the sharp edge of the weapon against the mercenary's leg and applied light pressure. The mercenary spat on the silver visor. Artemis' golden blue eyes bore into the hateful blues of her captive and drilled the eight-inch, carbon-steel blade through the impact-resistant fabric and skin of the leg. The mercenary's scream came out rasped before Artemis muffled the scream with her free hand.

"You're going to tell me now, yes?" She snarled. The mercenary hissed but nodded lightly.

"B-basement… building two…" The Mercenary rasped weakly. Artemis tilted her head and twitched her arm.

The mercenary fell limp, and Artemis reclaimed her knife, flicking the blade free of blood. Her armour's high-tech mirrors picked up movement inside the pelican. She dropped the body and the Spartan stomped around to the back, ripped down the troop-bay door with her hands and stared at the engineer within. The woman was visibly shaking, her hands covered with scorch marks, tiny burns and blisters. Her face was much the same way, and her clothes were charred in some places. Artemis stared right back at the scared brown eyes of the engineer.

Artemis strode passed her and into the cockpit, reaching under the pilot's seat and withdrew a titanium-protected computer chip the size of a sticky note thirty seconds later. She turned, walked back out of the pelican, only for the engineer to speak in a shaking voice.

"Y-your not going to k-kill me?" She asked.

"Do you want to be killed?" The Hyper-Lethal questioned, turning sideways to the woman, fixing her silver visor on her. The shaking woman shook her head rapidly. Artemis tapped a few buttons and her loadout changed as she spoke.

"Then find the vehicle pool, and _hide_." The woman nodded at the instructions and ran past the spartan, stumbling out of sight and out of sensor range.

Artemis scrunched her nose for a moment and huffed and set up a bunch of volatile explosives in and around the Pelican. UNSC tech in enemy hands was a no-no. Five minutes later, she was striding down the hallways of the second building, the experimental MA5C in her hands. Her steps slowed, eyeing the door that lay cracked open, with nothing but darkness beyond it down the interdicting hallway. Artemis peaked each corner, satisfied that they were empty. Nothing appeared on her other visions settings either and she snuck across, night vision lighting the way down several flights of stairs. The sound of her footfalls with each step was loud and echoing, no doubt alerting whoever was down here that she was coming. She lunged the final few steps onto solid steel.

The hallway in front of her was maybe twenty feet long with a single door at the end. It looked like a bunker door. Gears clicked and mechanical locks whirred.

And then the door swung open. The Spartan's rifle was up immediately, waiting for something to exit the massive, ten-foot-tall door.

Nothing did.

Slowly, Artemis proceeded forwards down the hallway. Security cameras watched every step the Hyper Lethal took.

" _Nice work… Six._ "

Artemis visibly tensed further. Though the sound was choppy, terribly mashed from different audio logs, there was no mistaking that deep baritone voice that poured from the ceiling's speakers.

She stopped just inside the doorway, her rifle sweeping every exposed part of the slowly brightening room that she could. There was a freight elevator on the spartan's right rated for twenty-thousand pounds, covered boxes on the same side of the room, medical privacy curtains on the opposite wall to her left. To the immediate left was a bunch of garbage bins, some with dried blood down the sides. Smack dab in the middle of the room was, what looked like, a seven-foot-tall mech supported by a harness from the ceiling and covered in armour that looked suspiciously like Artemis' old Mjolnir.

"Identify yourself." The Lone Wolf snarled in response. The audio clicked on again, but the voice was different, and a hologram sprung to life not far in front of her. The projection flickered, never managing to settle on a solid image.

" _You should know who I am, after all…"_ The voice still came from the speakers, but the mech had started to power up. The replicated helmet began to tilt up, illuminating a black visor into a dim gray. Various other lights began turning on along the mech's body, which stepped clunkily off the platform and rose to its full height, towering over the Spartan's height by a quarter-foot.

And then, in a twisted version of her own voice, it spoke.

"I… am you."


	7. Chapter 6: Hyper Duplication

_**Chapter 7**_

 **Disclaimer:** I do not own RWBY or Halo Reach. All rights go to Rooster Teeth(RWBY) and 343i / Bungie(Halo Reach)

* * *

Artemis slammed into the wall with a heavy clang.

It took her a few seconds, but she managed to tilt her head towards her enemies and turn her eyes to the bars at the top of her HuD. Blood dripped down her chin and trickled out of her nose and her vision swam. Her shields were slowly recharging, and her aura bar had since been swapped for her vitals bar. It was flashing a dangerous red.

She fixed her blurred and bloody vision on the slowly approaching figures. The wound burned hot, but her armour's biofoam injectors stopped any major blood or infection loss from the Spartan's shoulder. She needed to leave.

A condescending laugh ripped through the room once.

"You can't beat them, _Noble Six._ Jaegers, destroy her."

Six red visors fixed onto her silver one.

Her shields crackled back, and the Spartan unsteadily pushed herself up off the floor, glancing between the door and her foes.

Her mind made, Artemis moved and gunfire followed.

 _ **-Five minutes Prior-**_

" _I am you."_

 _The mech had her voice… as close as a mech could, at the very least. It probably could have fooled her teammates for a while. It's stance at the moment, was defensive._

 _She did have an assault rifle pointed at her copy's head, after all._

" _Prove it."_

 _The mech tilted it's head as if waiting for an order. And then it_ moved _._

 _If Artemis had been anyone but a Spartan, she wouldn't have seen the punch aimed for her - comparatively speaking - lightly armoured side. It was a good thing the robot was a head and shoulders taller than her. That usually meant that it was bulkier. Slower._

 _But it was as fast as she was._

 _The punch met Mjolnir thigh armour and forerunner improved energy shielding. At the same moment, Artemis performed a move similar to that of a kangaroo kick and planted her right boot into the stomach section of the robot. The Hyper Lethal landed back on the ground and secured her rifle to her back as the copy-cat mech stumbled just beyond arm's reach. It closed in, it's stance tighter and more aggressive._

 _Artemis swept her legs through the mech's and sent it to the ground. She maneuvered her heel to smash into the black visor. The mech rolled and her heel impacted metal, leaving a noticeable dent in the steel flooring. The holographic image had long since faded._

 _The mech's counter was a pair of heavy metal feet to the Spartan's chest plate that sent her skidding back more than a dozen feet. A brief alarm and message flashed across the Spartan's hud as the black coating that had covered the armour reverted back to it's maroon and black default scheme._

" _What the hell are you?"_

" _I am you. Three-One-Two."_

 _The Spartan scowled, her shields crackling back to full strength. The two armoured combatants charged each other again, meeting in a flurry of punches and kicks. Artemis was gaining ground on the mech, exploiting the holes she knew she didn't have. With an over-shoulder throw, Artemis sent the mech into the nearby wall._

 _The curtains of the nearest medical booths were sent wild from the multi-hundred-pound mech and the force of which it met the wall._

" _You're nothing but a machine."_

 _How Ironic._

 _Slow clapping filled the room as the mech slowly pried itself from the dent it had created in the wall._

" _Bra-vo, Sierra 312, Bra-vo." A voice drawled overtop the clapping. "As is expected of the one taking refuge under Ozpin's roof."_

 _Artemis paused, her blood slowing down back to its normal levels. "Who the_ hell _are you?"_

" _Tesala." From her peripheral, Artemis made out brown hair and a pristine all-black formal suit. "Leader of the_ Chaosdawn _and Head Researcher to the most powerful person to grace Remnant's surface."_

 _Her full figure entered the Spartan's full line of sight and stopped mere feet away from the copy-cat mech that had finally pried itself free from the wall. Artemis could see dents in some parts of the armour. She smiled grimly behind the silver visor of her helmet but made no immediate move in case the mech charged._

 _The mech waited, and more whirring could be heard to its immediate right. This one was bulkier and taller - noticeably so- and covered in another replicated scheme, adorned with earth green armour, a dull orange chestplate and red plating on the shoulders. Artemis' jaw clenched, her eyes narrowed and her fists tightened hard enough to break a metal beam in two._

" _I see you've met the next part of my little project here as well." The woman rubbed her palms together. Her fingers interlocked at her waist and the two mechs engaged the Spartan. "You'll encounter the others, don't you worry."_

 _Artemis grit her teeth, her blood began to pump like a speeding car once again, and the world seemed to slow to a crawl, countering and blocking punch after punch. But they were attacking as a pair, which made it easy to counter them both at the same time. Artemis raised her left forearm to block a punch from the larger of the two enemy combatants._

 _Blood and spit flew onto the lower quarter of Artemis' visor. She felt a lower rib crack and the air escape her lungs. The punch, which connected with her abdomen, had enough force to feel like a Spartan had hit her with their best and sent the young supersoldier to the ground._

 _Dazed, the Lone Wolf barely dodged the heavy stomp that was aimed to go through her helmet and vaulted to her feet. Her motion tracker lit with a fast, third target that connected with the jawline of her Mark V/B UA/HUL helmet, broke the last quarter of her shields and sent the Spartan stumbling a half dozen feet back and into a cloth-covered metal cage. Her ribs protested the rapid movement vehemently. She picked up the faintest of whimpers and Artemis pulled the cloth off with her. She glared back at the woman behind the two - now three mechs._

 _In the cage she uncovered was a kid, probably a teen, maybe thirteen to fourteen years in age, and very malnourished. Telling the child's gender wasn't easy, considering the puffy blanket that was pulled around them. Hiding something. Artemis caught a wild haymaker from her copy without so much as a twitch from her eyes. She wrenched the mech to the side, into the wall and twisted. She twisted hard enough to rip the mech's right arm from its body, spitting hydraulic fluids. Sparks shot in an endless stream from broken wiring. The arm twitched in the Spartan's clenched fist, who proceeded to crush the joint, rendering the arm unsalvageable._

 _The bigger of the mech's delivered a Spartan kick, which she managed to reflect off the arm, but the attack still grazed her right flank. The leg lodged itself inside the heavy metal framing of the cage. Her ribs protested further._

 _Artemis sprung into action fully, literally leaping more than a meter into the air to meet the flying punch of the third, smaller and nimbler teal mech. Both punches from either combatant connected, but the Spartan landed flat on her Mjolnir-covered feet, while the third slammed into the ground, back first. Her shields crackled back into existence and began their recharge. The armless copy and small combatants picked themselves off the floor, visors glued to the Spartan._

 _The woman sighed and tapped several keys on a watch which, until now, had remained hidden beneath her left sleeve._

" _Jaeger One, Jaeger Three and Four, activation code Mistral-Vale-Tango-Three-Niner. Engage and terminate Target Sierra Three-one-two."_

 _Unfortunately for the Spartan, her back was now turned to the newly activated mechs. But these replicated colour schemes were beginning to piss her off. Three new contacts jumped onto the motion tracker but only two joined the slow game of containing the Spartan. Blue, teal, dull green and dull orange armours circled maroon/black armour. These mechs were fast._

 _But it didn't matter. They outnumbered her six-to-one. The smaller, teal armoured mech moved, an attack Artemis dodged easily enough. But it put her in a position where she couldn't respond effectively. She also caught another punch in the back, near the location of her armour's reactor. And so began the cycle of feint attacks, dodges, counters and counter-counter-attacks from both parties. This continued on for what felt like several minutes, but in reality, it was about eighty seconds._

 _Artemis grabbed a wild haymaker from the dark blue mech, delivering a fist to the faceplate with enough force to crack it, spider-web style. Adrenaline roared in the Lone Wolf's ears, dulling the crack of a rifle. The round hit her shields like a truck, popping the weakened protective system and staggering the Spartan into the grip of the largest mech. It slammed her into the wall. She felt her aura disintegrate into a recharge state, removing the Spartan's absolute last layer of protection from wounds. Fatigue and weariness began setting in almost immediately._

 _The mech kept it's grip on her, spinning around so the golden blue eyes of the Spartan were greeted with the barrel of a very large weapon. She saw it's finger twitch around the trigger._

 _In the condensed metal room, the sound of the high-calibre weapon was deafening. Artemis couldn't feel her left arm._

 _She didn't even feel the wall she was thrown against._

* * *

 _ **~~~~~Qrow, Same time~~~~~**_

* * *

Qrow panted, using _Harbinger_ as a crutch to catch his breath. He patted his satchel and nodded after feeling his palm push against the beat-up camera. The base alarms were still ringing. He could hear it, figuratively speaking, as the sound bounced around in his head. The glass-decorated crater to his front was a sight to behold. Sure, Remnant had meteor strikes from time to time, but nothing this big.

His foot impacted the metal plate that the Spartan hadn't brought with her earlier. He grabbed it and with a shrug, tucked it into his satchel. It didn't quite fit, with half of it sticking out of the huntsman's shoulder-slung accessory. In the dark of night, Qrow caught the few flashlights that began to crest the dune to his left.

They'd managed to keep up with him for now. He slid down into the crater and began running once again, before transforming and taking flight towards Vacuo.

He expected the worst, certainly. Qrow hadn't made it this far in life with this semblance of his by expecting the best. Especially in this line of work. His red eyes scanned the skies and the ground around him. Two heavy vehicles - troop transports if his memory served - churned through the soft desert flats as Vacuo's city-scape came closer and closer.

Qrow cursed within his own mind, beating his wings faster, proverbially throwing himself ahead of the speeding vehicles below him. Another few minutes or so of furiously developing a sizeable lead of time over the enemies below, and now behind him, the soft desert turned to hard desert flats and the industrial sector of the Kingdom of Vacuo pierced the skyline in front of the renowned huntsman.

He picked one of the few abandoned and aged factories, landing on top one of two exhaust stacks, settling into a missing section of the concrete tower. He shifted back from a bird, his legs propped against the opposite section. Grimacing, he pulled the metal sheet from his pocket and set it beneath his legs.

Only a few moments after Qrow had arrived at Vacuo's outer industrial complexes, the headlights of his pursuers vehicles pierced the Kingdom's outermost limits. Because of its desert location, Vacuo had much the same situation as Atlas. Grimm attacks were rare. The heat was hard on the people, and harder on the Grimm. Their bodies couldn't dispel the desert heat quicker than they absorbed it, resulting in fewer attacks on the city proper.

But it didn't mean that Vacuo skimped on its security.

The huntsman stood, grabbed the metal plate, and descended to the streets below. The CCTS Tower at Shade Academy was visible, if only barely, over the tops of the factories Qrow navigated through. It took him longer than he wanted, around ten minutes or so to find the road that led directly to Shade Academy. The transports flew passed the Academy's entrance street and far out of sight. The huntsman waited until their rumbling engines were beyond his hearing.

Keeping a hand on _Harbinger_ , and another on the metal plate and his satchel, the huntsman began briskly making his way to Shade Academy's grounds. He breached the Academy grounds and promptly dove to the ground, hands covering his head. The ground rumbled and part of the front wall of Shade's grand hall exploded outwards, showering the courtyard and entrance in burning debris and glass shards.

With a grunt, Qrow uncovered his head and pushed himself to his knees.

"Damn…" He coughed, swiping a hand in front of his eyes.

"Don't move."

A weapon barrel pressed against the back of his head, and Qrow slowly raised his hands and was pushed face-first into the dirt. His arms were wrenched behind his back and bound. Suppressing a grimace, Qrow let himself be manhandled and walked into the ruined Grand Hall. One of the soldiers had removed his satchel. Smoke still flowed through the building, filling the hallways and atrium-like area with noxious fumes. The heat of the flames still licked at the building, but couldn't advance across the stones that protected the support pillars behind them. His captors led the huntsman along the familiar route to the Headmaster's office on the partial third floor. The haze and smoke were thinner once they breached the third floor, with most of the fire and smoke confined and vented through the first and second floors.

The twin engineered stone-covered oak doors were opened, greeting Qrow with a gruesome scene. There were at least four bodies, tossed like a doll into the corner. Qrow couldn't make out the face of any of them. He silently hoped none where Shade's headmaster. The hardwood floor was clean, save for where the bodies were located. The remaining three bodies were left strewn about the room. Five figures pre-occupied the room, four of them standing at parade rest, two per side, creating a straight path to the fifth figure sitting behind the former headmaster's desk.

The figure was male, smoking a cigar and stared directing at the captive huntsman. His outfit appeared military-styled, but vastly contradicted the colours of Remnant's dominant military power. Dumped unceremoniously in the center of the room, the apparent leader dismissed the four guards, as well as Qrow's two transporting guards. The guard took Qrow's cuffs with them, allowing the huntsman to massage his wrists. _Harbinger_ was tossed into a corner with a heavy thunk, and the metal plate was set on the desk of the absent Headmaster.

The oak doors closed with a heavy thump behind the glowering huntsman. The male smiled slightly.

"Qrow Branwen. How nice of you to stop by. Do you like my new kingdom?"

Qrow stayed silent, but his eyes moved around the room. The man seemed content with his silence for the moment. "Don't even bother, Branwen. Escaping here… well, you wouldn't make it ten feet to that door."

The man flashed a chrome-plated heavy six-shot revolver secured to the right side of his waistband as he stepped around to the front of the desk, the small camera in hand. His left hand grappled the cigar away from his mouth, allowing the heavily muscled man to vent the cigar's smoke into the room. Qrow mentally admitted that the man's words held truth to them. He had little aura left, and he had no idea what that heavy revolver was capable of.

"Bryant Vertrauen, at your service." The man introduced himself, "Rather, _you're_ at _my_ service, Mr. Branwen."

Qrow stared at the man, long and hard." I'm not at anyone's service." He growled.

"Oh, _oh_ , I'm sorry," The man sarcastically replied, "You've run missions for Ozpin for the better part of ten years."

Bryant scoffed, " _Mutt."_

Qrow snarled but fell silent otherwise. It was servitude, from a certain point of view. But he did this because he wanted to. Right? To protect the planet at large from this threat?

Right?

"I do what I do on my own will, mercenary because I choose to. We work alongside each other. Nothing more, nothing less. Besides, I do the opposite of what groups like you do. I help protect people."

Bryant tapped his cigar and took another puff. "'By your own will'? Stop fooling yourself, Branwen. You owe him for saving your sorry ass. You and your sister both. Only - she was smart enough to walk away when the opportunity presented itself. It doesn't matter." He chuckled mirthlessly.

Qrow's face had taken an iron mask, a look that betrayed his emotions to the leader. A vicious smirk crested the man's cracked lips. "In the end… none of it will matter, however. Our employer's master will dominate and destroy all of those that stand against her."

The man clenched his cigar in his teeth and pulled his revolver from its holster.

"We'll stop you. And your employer." Qrow vowed, pushing himself to his feet. He was still half a head shorter than the mercenary commander.

"No… I don't think you will. You're going to die here, and then I'm going to personally deal with your associate back at base."

"My associate?" Qrow raised an eyebrow before chuckling. "Good luck, you'll find the kid more than capable of looking after herself."

"Really? I've executed her kind before." Bryant cast a smirk at Qrow that stopped the huntsman mid-chuckle.

The mercenary commander popped the revolver's cylinder free, spun it a couple of times before flicking it back into the body of the weapon. He raised the revolver level with Qrow's temple. The weapon's barrel warped when the man pulled the trigger, and the huntsman opposite him tilted his head, letting the shards of the bullet sail through the door behind him.

Gunfire started echoing through the ruined academy, startling both men. Bryant and Qrow moved at the same time, meeting the other with cocked fists. Each punch hit the other's jaw and both men recoiled back several steps. Qrow recovered first, delivered punches to the mercenary commander's hasty, but sturdy guard. Bryant's heavier physique gave him the edge over Qrow and matched the veteran Huntsman in speed and agility.

The smirk that had settled on the merc's face was now absent, replaced by a mask of steel. His eyes darted across Qrow's tense body, as Qrow did the same in return. The gunfire got closer and closer with each passing moment. They circled each other slowly and Qrow took a risk to glance to his side. The mercenary commander took advantage and moved, delivering a swift kick to Qrow's stomach, sending the huntsman sprawling back towards _Harbinger_.

His hand sprawled over the grip of his weapon and swung at the man, who jumped back. Bryant's hands dove into the pockets of his jacket and pulled free a pair of brass knuckles. They were massive, easily four times the size and three times as thick with ridges on every finger. They unfolded, forming segmented armour over the entirety of Bryant's hand, coming halfway up his forearms. Ridges trailed from the knuckles to the edges, lined with razor-sharp blades. Qrow held _Harbinger_ in front of him in a two-handed grip as the merc settled into a boxing stance.

Qrow struck first, _Harbinger's_ blade slicing nothing but fabric. Qrow smirked as Bryant picked at the severed threads of his jacket. Bryant wasted no time counter-attacking, his fists hammering into the reinforced blade of _Harbinger_. Qrow's guard remained unflinching against the tireless blows from the mercenary's heavy hits. He spun away as his foe struck again, twirling _Harbinger_ into it's deadlier scythe form. The gears clicked and ground against each other and the blade extended with puffs of steam from sections of the blade.

With a heavy-handed strike, Qrow broke the guard of the mercenary commander and kicked him into the small pile of bodies. The big man snarled and stood back up, shaking blood off his gauntlets and shredded the crimson-soaked jacket with a mighty tug. Bryant slammed his fists together and lightning began sparking over the bladed ridges and the knuckles of the weapons.

They engaged once again, with Qrow using the long reach of his scythe to keep the mercenary at bay. When the bigger man managed to get inside his guard, he went for a heavy, two-handed overhead slam that stopped short of Qrow's face thanks to _Harbinger's_ handle. Branwen smirked, throwing Bryant back and roundhousing him in the side, sending the man into the headmaster's desk. He pounced, his heavy blade slicing a gouge into the gauntlets and spinning the man away.

In the same quick moment, Qrow swiped the camera, his satchel and charged out the large window behind the headmaster's desk. The mercenary picked himself up as a subordinate entered the office.

"Sir, the perimeter has been breached."

Bryant smiled thinly, "About time. I was beginning to get bored. Let's give our old friends a warm welcome, hm?"

His subordinate followed him out of the room.

* * *

 _ **~~~~~Beacon Academy~~~~~**_

* * *

The cafeteria was quiet, dinner having finished nearly an hour before. Nora had gone to Vale earlier after exams had been finished for the day and dragged Pyrrha and Ruby along for the ride. Ren resisted the tired sigh that sat on the edge of his lips and grabbed his bottle of water. Jaune was next to him, tapping away at his scroll, a rare look of absolute concentration on his face. Despite being a - in Ren's opinion anyway - close-knit team, JNPRR did need space and a few hours from one another to breathe.

His scroll buzzed.

A message from Pyrrha in the team group chat. _Have you seen Artemis?_

Ren: _No. Not since Professor Port's exam. Why?_

 _I can't reach her scroll. Either it's malfunctioning, or she's ignoring me._

 _Hold on._

Ren opened his own contacts and tapped on the Lone Wolf's name. A loading circle spun once, then twice before it started ringing. After a few tense seconds, a phone emblem with a slash through it flashed up, blinking slowly red. He tried again and per his expectations, he received the same result. He turned to Jaune and tapped the blonde on the shoulder. The knight didn't do more than glance quickly at Ren, but it was enough for the ninja to know he was listening.

"Have you tried contacting Artemis at all today?"

Jaune nodded once. "I tried a couple of hours before dinner, and just before, but no luck in reaching her. I got voice mail once, and then nothing else since."

Ren sighed, but Jaune continued. "I mean, isn't it strange? She attends all classes, does all the assigned homework _and_ is still able to help us when we have trouble."

"But she missed three exams?" Ren continued.

"But she missed three exams." Jaune agreed, settling his scroll on the table."It's just not her style."

"There's still a great deal we do not know - about each other, and especially our wayward teammate," Ren said, quickly sending a reply to Pyrrha, leaving his scroll on the table and picking his book back up.

Jaune didn't reply, returning to whatever he'd been doing on his scroll beforehand.

Elsewhere on campus, Ozpin stood on a landing platform, the very same one Qrow and Artemis had departed from hours earlier. The cold late evening air didn't bother the Headmaster. His eyes scanned the darkening sky, looking for any signs of aircraft entering the Academy's airspace overtop of Vale.

"They're late on their check-in." He hummed to himself, taking another sip of his lukewarm coffee. "I guess it isn't too much to worry about though. They can handle it, I'm sure."

Ozpin kept talking lowly to himself, a small smile over his face and he turned back to the Academy, following the smooth, lit path back to the Academy buildings.

* * *

 _AN: Sorry for the whole bunch of time skips and setting changes and the wait for this chapter. There were things I'd wanted to include in this one - some of which wouldn't really make sense this early._

 _Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Until next time._


End file.
